Family Share is basically the same as giving ID and Password. Pointless.

[Knightingale]

If this we're on a per-game basis then maybe you would have something here.
But a family can just share a password to get the same effect.

Oh with the exception of protecting your achievments which mean NOTHING in the first place.

Oh I guess I could share my account with my brother then come home and rip him out of Skyrim before he can save because I pulled my games back to my computer. Like that won't cause problems.

I'm sorry Valve. But no.
That is more frustration, less innovation.

[Sloppy Seconds]

False. The family share function will only allow access to games in which the account owner has authorized. This allows parents control over what game a child plays, and not have free reign over their account, ie. why it's called Family Sharing.

[박니키]

It will be like this:

A Parent has one account and the child has a separate one the parent sets it up so when they buy a game they can allow the child's account permission to access that game if they feel it''s appropriate for them and then the child then wont mess up the parents saved progress in a game as they have a separate save location in their profile.

[Knightingale]

Oh so this is parental controls? Why didn't they just say so and call it that?

And really.. a kid doesn't know how to make their own account without their parent knowing anyway?
What are we talking about here? 5 year olds?
I don't see many games on steam for 5 year olds.

They should have just built in a game trade system. And charge a small fee on trades. Maybe tie it to Steam Marketplace so we have a going rate, volume of sales, etc.
Make games a new currency, make headlines in the news because of it. Everybody wins. lol

[yutt]

I was confused by this system as well. I was hoping my wife could play single player games from my library without us having to buy a copy for each PC. Instead... this system seems completely pointless. The edge cases where it would be useful are few and far between.

Only share with people you can trust, because otherwise they could get you banned from the system, but can't trust enough to give your account information? Weird.

[Gaviota]

Agree with Mason. When I saw the announcement I didn't get the impression that it was about parental control. It even said as a great thing that you could share with your close friends... in the same PC. If I wanted to share my PC with all its software, not just Steam, with my friends (or family) there was nothing stopping me before, was it?

[Worira]

Agreed. I also find the comparison to physical media pretty disingenuous; you lend a friend a book, not every book you own glued together.

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by Mason:

Oh so this is parental controls? Why didn't they just say so and call it that?

Because it isn't. You share your entire library. You don't pick and choose games, you pick who has access to your entire library (minus the games that cant be shared (third party DRM etc).

[Knightingale]

Originally posted by KARR:

Originally posted by Mason:

Oh so this is parental controls? Why didn't they just say so and call it that?

Because it isn't. You share your entire library. You don't pick and choose games, you pick who has access to your entire library (minus the games that cant be shared (third party DRM etc).

That's my point.
It's not parental control. It's pointless control.
I give my entire library to my brother. Then I can't play any of my other games. I'm left sitting here at my place bored out of my mind.
Until I reclaim my library back and rip him out of whatever game he's playing.

I can do the same by sharing a password. Which is against TOS. So this just seems like a something to prevent people from doing that. They should call it what it is.
This is starting to remind me of the whole Xbox One crap.

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by Sloppy Seconds:

False. The family share function will only allow access to games in which the account owner has authorized. This allows parents control over what game a child plays, and not have free reign over their account, ie. why it's called Family Sharing.

According to the FAQ doesn't work that way,

Can I share specific games, or do I have to share my whole library?

Libraries are shared and borrowed in their entirety.

So yes, it's pretty much "Let someone use my account, while not using my account"

[xNinja83x]

This would be awesome if it was on a game by game basis. Say I'm playing SMB one of my friends could be playing skyrim at the same time. We just couldn't play the same game at once. It could even be just one friend at a time and it would still be cool.