New Steam Family Sharing Issue 2024 “Sharing Library Locked”

[Coolersky]

The new steam family sounded so perfect until realizing that the “license pooling” in fact meant that.

If a family consisting of 4 and 2 members have the official copy of a game, it does not mean that 2 original copies will make 2 extra copies for the other 4 to play.

The feature is similar as the one before if a person is playing a game from the owner, this will prevent that owner to play if his/her game is in use.

My personal fault for misunderstanding the guidelines of this new “steam families” feature, but holy this is very deceiving and it made me even hate this feature knowing that I can’t play the game with other members of the family using my game.

This feature just enabled anyone in the family share to have the license to play that game depending on the amount of copies if there are 2 original copies ONLY 2 for ANYONE within 4 or any number to 6 family members of the family sharing to play 2 copies at a time.

I hope they make changes with this, as this feature is no different from the previous family sharing.

[Ogami]

They will never allow more then one user playing the same game license at the same time.
The entire family share system is voluntary. And a ton of devs/publishers have stated that they would retract their games from the family service if a single game license could be played by multiple users at the same time.
Because that actively loses them money in the end.

So its either a family share system with this restriction or no family share at all.

[Vaemer-Riit]

The ability to play any other game in your library while someone is using one of your other games is a huge improvement over the original family sharing setup.

Why would you ever think you got more licences than the family purchased?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You're looking for the other feature Remote Play Together that can work in conjunction with sharing.

See if the games you mention support it.

[Apathetic]

on top of what cSg|mc-Hotsauce said

In some cases you can do it without remote play. I wont get into HOW to do it because i'm not 100% sure if its allowed?

Even though its never been / can't be patched. [by steam without changing a lot]

Just need to do a little bit of research.

Again though. This is not all games, And I only know of a few through being told about them.


One example is divinity original sin 2
4 people can play this game with 1 copy without using steam remote play. using the family share system.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

There's even a section for it...

https://store.steampowered.com/remoteplay_together

[Suroguner]

This is basically the equivalent of needing multiple cds or dvds for multiple people to be able to play the same game at the same time.

[Unlucky]

There will always be simps who will oil the company no matter what, the new system is horrible. Now It doesnt even allow sharing between accounts anymore that are made in different countries.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Coolersky:

The new steam family sounded so perfect until realizing that the “license pooling” in fact meant that.

If a family consisting of 4 and 2 members have the official copy of a game, it does not mean that 2 original copies will make 2 extra copies for the other 4 to play.

The feature is similar as the one before if a person is playing a game from the owner, this will prevent that owner to play if his/her game is in use.

My personal fault for misunderstanding the guidelines of this new “steam families” feature, but holy this is very deceiving and it made me even hate this feature knowing that I can’t play the game with other members of the family using my game..

I mean that isn't remotely deceiving. If you pooled your money and had $20 in total you don't magically duplicate it so everyone has $20. Its very clear

[Cannabud]

What your looking for is available on Xbox but you can only do it with one other person. I to thought it would work that way too but the only thing close to that is remote play together on steam. Its nice when it works but i get it to work sparingly.

[Luke Hatsune]

This is better than what was available before though. I’ve never used Steam Family share myself but remembered that the old one allowed anyone you were sharing with to play your games but only one person can play from your Steam library at a time and the owner of the library had priority whenever they decided to play. This new family share system is better yet slightly worse at the same time. The positives of this new system are anyone in the Steam Family can play any game as long as multiple people don’t play the same games unless there are multiple licenses, the host of the family does not need to be offline to play their games whenever someone else is playing them unless someone else is playing the game the license owner wants to play (this is just a courtesy to let someone else play it), the owner has priority of their games as it kicks out the person playing a game if the owner opens that same game. The cons of this new system are it’s restricted to household only so only people living with you can be invited (not sure on how this work but potentially Steam deck users can circumvent this requirement. It’s just a hypothesis though), if one person cheats the owner of the game will receive the consequences, and a 1 year wait if someone leaves it you kick them out of the family. Honestly this new system has more pros than cons. As for multiple people not being able to play the same games at once that’s nothing new. The old system didn’t allow this and sharing a game disc never made this possible. If Steam allowed it publishers would remove their games from family share as less people would buy the game since they can share it with 4 other people.

[Rin]

The whole idea of Steam Family Sharing is to pass the remote, not share or rent games with some rando you only met online, hence the restriction which has no downside unless you aren't related of course.

[radbananas]

Lot of families don't live in the same household... I live across the country from my family. Would still like to share games with my brother.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by radbananas:

Lot of families don't live in the same household... I live across the country from my family. Would still like to share games with my brother.

It will work if they live within the same country.

[Luke Hatsune]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Originally posted by radbananas:

Lot of families don't live in the same household... I live across the country from my family. Would still like to share games with my brother.

It will work if they live within the same country.

Does it work like that? The way Steam frames it makes it sound like it’s only possible if they live within the same house.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by Luke Hatsune:

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

It will work if they live within the same country.

Does it work like that? The way Steam frames it makes it sound like it’s only possible if they live within the same house.

Same country.