Steam Family Sharing Useless if 2 persons want to play

[MrBean]

The whole game library is locked when a child is playing a game and someone else wants to play another game. So Dad can't play when a child is playing one of his shared games.
This is useless. If only the played game was locked then it would be useful but now...

Greetings,
Alex

[ KARR™]

The game OWNER can play what they want, when they want.

But, no, only one person can play a game in a library at any one time. Otherwise there would be thousands in lost sales. Only one person would buy games and share them all to all their friends.

[TeKraken]

If I lent you my bicycle could I then cycle anywhere? Nope.

[Jawaka]

Originally posted by KARR:

The game OWNER can play what they want, when they want.

But, no, only one person can play a game in a library at any one time. Otherwise there would be thousands in lost sales. Only one person would buy games and share them all to all their friends.

Thousands of lost sales is a gross exaggeration. The gaming industry did just fine from the 80s till about 2010 when people would be able to purchase two physical games and play them on two different PCs at the same time.

[Jawaka]

Originally posted by TeKraken:

If I lent you my bicycle could I then cycle anywhere? Nope.

No but if you lent me your cycle you can still use your car, something that you wouldn't be able to do in Steamland.

[Pheace]

Originally posted by Jawaka:

Thousands of lost sales is a gross exaggeration. The gaming industry did just fine from the 80s till about 2010 when people would be able to purchase two physical games and play them on two different PCs at the same time.

Which is absolutely incomparable to the digital world we live in. Physical sharing was highly limited to a local region around where you lived, and with far longer delays between sharing than this system.

Even with the system as it is I can play a game now, my brother halfway across the country could play it later in the day when I'm not around, and then at night when I want to play again I'll continue playing.

That is already far beyond what you used to be capable of.

Add in per game sharing, and a bunch of worldwide 'friends' sharing their libraries, and this system is absolutely incomparable to physical sharing. It would definitely cut into sales.

[Jawaka]

I don't see any reason why Steam couldn't open up family sharing to allow different people to play different games if they're connecting to Steam via the same IP address.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Jawaka:

I don't see any reason why Steam couldn't open up family sharing to allow different people to play different games if they're connecting to Steam via the same IP address.

This is 'famliy sharing' not 'i want to open a game rental service'

[Amun]

Let's just put the economics discussion aside for a minute and talk about what we as consumers want.

I'd like to share my games with my close friends like I did in the pre-digital age. I'd like to loan it out for a week or two and get it back at the end. As it stands, the family sharing setup doesn't add any value to me. If I had a bunch of kids and didn't want to buy several copies for the home computer, family sharing would be useless because the kids wouldn't be able to play *different games* at the same time.

[Τhe Rolling Cheese Wheel]

Originally posted by Amun:

Let's just put the economics discussion aside for a minute and talk about what we as consumers want.

I'd like to share my games with my close friends like I did in the pre-digital age. I'd like to loan it out for a week or two and get it back at the end. As it stands, the family sharing setup doesn't add any value to me. If I had a bunch of kids and didn't want to buy several copies for the home computer, family sharing would be useless because the kids wouldn't be able to play *different games* at the same time.

Again you are missing the point of family sharing. It' suppose to increase sales not decrease them. How is a dev suppose to survive and make enough money to make another game, when people buy their games for already ridiculously low prices and then proceed to share them with no restrictions?

Who is we? You don't speak for me or for the vast majority of steam users who never even had the ability to share games till just recently.

This whole entitlement issue is ridiculous, before when we didn't have sharing, people whine. Now we do have limited sharing and people still whine. I guess people will only stop whining when they get what they want at the expense of the health of the industry.

[Chara the Explorer]

You all clearly know nothing about the SFS if you think there's no restrictions on it, even ignoring the whole per-library/game issue.

The system is HEAVILY designed to discourage people from sharing with anyone and everyone. Not only can you only share with five other accounts, you have to give up your account credentials, thus risk losing your account (even local sharing is dangerous if they have a keylogger on their computer), and even after that they can play any game on your account you want (unless you convince them to let you put the kiddie lock on their account), potentially getting you VAC banned. Oh, and good luck constantly swapping friends to freeload off when the authorization function is on cooldown.

People generally only shared physical games with people they trusted so they didn't lose dozens of dollars. And guess what? The industry survived. People kept buying games even though they could pool them if desired. Now with the SFS, you STILL only share with people you trust so you don't lose up to thousands of dollars worth of games, or get banned from playing your favourite games online.

In any case, saying "Valve doesn't want the system to be a free-for-all" is daft, because guess what? People are ALREADY treating it like a free-for-all. People who don't live together with different schedules are barely effected by the per-library restriction. Meanwhile, Families who generally have their spare time at around the same time are screwed over.

[-Someone Else-]

I really don't understand this whole concept of lost sales. If I want to play Borderlands 2 while my son is playing Sonic All-Star Racing exactly where would the lost sale come in. The only way a sale would be lost is if I was trying to have both of us play the single copy of Borderlands 2. I don't see anything wrong with treating each game like a separate entity. If I had disc versions of two different games, one person could play one game while I played the other. Does that result in a lost sale? So why can't individual games be treated as such?

I also don't see discussing the general lack of functionality with family sharing as whining, but I guess in the hyperbolic world of the forum rational discussion is immediately categorized as such.

[Chara the Explorer]

Originally posted by -Someone Else-:

I really don't understand this whole concept of lost sales. If I want to play Borderlands 2 while my son is playing Sonic All-Star Racing exactly where would the lost sale come in. The only way a sale would be lost is if I was trying to have both of us play the single copy of Borderlands 2. I don't see anything wrong with treating each game like a separate entity. If I had disc versions of two different games, one person could play one game while I played the other. Does that result in a lost sale? So why can't individual games be treated as such?

I also don't see discussing the general lack of functionality with family sharing as whining, but I guess in the hyperbolic world of the forum rational discussion is immediately categorized as such.

Pretty much this. Developers aren't losing sales for the most part because familes don't buy multiple copies of the same single player game. Co-op and multiplayer is one thing, but would I pay another sixty bucks for a copy of Bioshock Infinite when I can just let my spouse use my account? Minor convinience? Hell no.

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by -Someone Else-:

I really don't understand this whole concept of lost sales. If I want to play Borderlands 2 while my son is playing Sonic All-Star Racing exactly where would the lost sale come in.

If he always has access to that copy of the game on your account, he hasn't bought his own copy. If he is kicked off it when you want to play the game, it entices him to purchase his own copy of the game.

[Chara the Explorer]

Originally posted by KARR:

Originally posted by -Someone Else-:

I really don't understand this whole concept of lost sales. If I want to play Borderlands 2 while my son is playing Sonic All-Star Racing exactly where would the lost sale come in.

If he always has access to that copy of the game on your account, he hasn't bought his own copy. If he is kicked off it when you want to play the game, it entices him to purchase his own copy of the game.

And why should he need to be convinced to purchase a game the family already has? This is the point you're missing.
If I own two different games on my Xbox, my spouse shouldn't need to buy her own copy for her own Xbox (and I'm being hypothetical here so don't ask why we have seperate machines), because we bought it with the family funds. If anyone told me she needs to buy her own copy or developers would get poor, I would tell them to ♥♥♥♥ right off, and I imagine you would too.

Edit: At best this argument holds water when it comes to friends, but even then it's not like people can't pool their physical games if they want to.

[Silicon Vampire]

Our family has three separate accounts and computers. we use family sharing to check out each others games that we don't have. Beyond that, we like our separate accounts and have a lot of the same games... as we should. We are separate people. Games are a form of entertainment and a cheap one at that. Besides 'Family Night's" at any theater, how many can watch a movie with one ticket?

I think this is more along what was intended when the system was implemented. Not a way to share with everyone you know or start a game rental service...