What's the point in Steam family if I can't invite my friends anymore?

[lastbreath]

Earlier Steam allowed to share your library with specific PC user. I live in Ukraine and I was able to let my friend from Poland to play my games. Now I can't. So what's the point?

[Crazy Tiger]

For starters it's there for family, not friends. And the new setup is to stop people from renting out their libraries to people in other countries.

Keep in mind that your personal usecase isn't actually that relevant to the grander scheme.

[lastbreath]

Amazing. Steam development means "cutting functionality" I see. First sharing, now screenshots manager is dumbed down, what's next? Mobile time limits? Jesus Christ...

[Crazy Tiger]

You shouldn't be surprised that functionality might get lost when measures against abuse and bad actors get implemented or tightened.

[BJWyler]

Originally posted by lastbreath:

Amazing. Steam development means "cutting functionality" I see. First sharing, now screenshots manager is dumbed down, what's next? Mobile time limits? Jesus Christ...

No it means reducing the avenues of abuse. Sorry, but now you'll have to start charging your Ukranian "friends" to play your games.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by lastbreath:

Amazing. Steam development means "cutting functionality" I see.

Blame the people who used the old family sharing system to share with their friends and strangers.

[Yujah]

Originally posted by lastbreath:

Steam development means "cutting functionality" I see.

The new system allows more than one concurrent access to a library. To different games, or even the same game if there are multiple copies of it in the combined library.

That added functionality I personally feel much more significant than ability to share with people in other countries; parent & kid being able to play different games from dad's shared library at the same time, say. Yet it seems that few even mention it...

[ꉔꏂ꒐꒒ꇙ]

Originally posted by lastbreath:

I live in Ukraine and I was able to let my friend from Poland to play my games.

Why? what did you make them give you for that access? they can buy their own games. You aren't their parent. Sales happen on the daily so, prices shouldn't be an issue.

It's just people wanting to abuse something good, like usual. Even if I didn't have this/that or whatever, I wouldn't abuse a system to get access to them. I'll get them myself when able.

[Amaterasu]

Steam Family share is and always for something like me allowing my little brother to play games from my library and vice versa. We live in the same city, so it wouldn't be a problem. It was never for allowing friends to play games from your library, especially across national borders.

[DarkCrystalMethod]

I think the subtle goal behind it is to give everyone and your friends a taste of the game and then the desire for everyone to play together eventually pushes them to buy their own copy of the game as originally intended. They call it Family share because its supposed to be a small pool of people so its not abused. Are they going to check people's driver's licenses or other ID to confirm that they're related? Maybe they should.

[Chika Ogiue]

Originally posted by DarkCrystalMethod:

They call it Family share because its supposed to be a small pool of people so its not abused.

They call it Steam Families because it's meant for families.

To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.

Valve don't need to do ID checks, the limit to same Steam store region pretty much rules most of the abuse. The 1 year cool down on leaving a family before being allowed to join another also further serves as a deterrent to people still trying to sell access to games via the feature.

[DarkCrystalMethod]

Requiring everyone being in the same region breaks apart families as they may legit be living in different countries. Is Valve against the concept of the family unit while ironically using the word in the feature that divides them?

[D. Flame]

1.) Offer great features to build a user base and monopoly
2.) Remove said features once monopoly is established and nothing can be done about it
3.) Swim in your oceans of money

[Thermal Lance]

Originally posted by DarkCrystalMethod:

Requiring everyone being in the same region breaks apart families as they may legit be living in different countries. Is Valve against the concept of the family unit while ironically using the word in the feature that divides them?

As for many things with how Steam works, you can blame people abusing it to high heaven for it to be gone.

[lastbreath]

I love how mice try to defend the cat. If you have physical copy you can share it with all people around you. But I dare you to do it with your digital copy! Big companies try to limit you as much as they can. If they could they wouldn't allow you to share even bread. Obey, buy, consume, don't ask questions! Jeez...

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by lastbreath:

Amazing. Steam development means "cutting functionality" I see. First sharing, now screenshots manager is dumbed down, what's next? Mobile time limits? Jesus Christ...

You were actually using that function illegally by doing exactly what Steam don't want you to do. You're not supposed to share your library with people outside your own house. Period.