Family sharing is useless.

[Amikot]

Hello,
Question to Steam:
What is the purpose to have shared library if I cant let play my family member on his PC one game while I'm playing another game on my PC?

Please don't fool me the answer about sharing trophies or achievement points - this is rubbish.

Yes: you don't need to answer - Family mode is useless.

Of course its stated in user agreement, purchased games are not my belongings - so I can't say that blocking access to them is illegal. User agreement is written this way that user rights are limited to minimum.
That's nothing strange - this has its purposes. It would be difficult to manage everything when anyone can ask for anything because he owns a copy of a game. But I feel Stram is overusing this policy.
Limiting users to play their games how and when they want is just bad. If I can't play my Cities Skylines on my PC while my children play children games on laptop - this has no purposes. That should not be limited. Specially that its against rules to create account for small children - I had to buy children games for my account. When I finally created account for them, I would like to let them play as family members - but its impossible. What Stream is protecting doing this?

Let confess that this is only because of greed and for love for money, because there is no another purpose.


In that case, please dear Steam Users, do customer protest and at least try to use another publishers if its possible. Let Steam feel where they are sensitive - that we don't like this policy of limiting us.

Thanks.

[ReBoot]

My sister is enjoying my library just fine. But she can't if family sharing is useless. Yet she is. How can it be? Oh right, there are downsides all right, but you're overdramatizing them, blowing them way out of proportion.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Go offline while someone is using your library.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Amikot:

Hello,
Question to Steam:
What is the purpose to have shared library if I cant let play my family member on his PC one game while I'm playing another game on my PC?

So people in your family can play games when you aren't.

If family sharing allowed people to play the games at the same time people would just rent out access to their account, people wouldn't buy their own games, and so on and no games would participate in it.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Amikot:

Please don't fool me the answer about sharing trophies or achievement points - this is rubbish.

That has nothing to do with it. People abusing things and creating rental accounts is a real thing, however.

Originally posted by Amikot:

If I can't play my Cities Skylines on my PC while my children play children games on laptop - this has no purposes.

That is because the purpose of family sharing is that family members can play a game when you're away, without you needing to give them your login. You inventing a different purpose is your doing.

It can be circumvented. You play in offline mode while your family member plays online. They have to be online, as they need to be verified to be allowed to use the shared games.

Originally posted by Amikot:

Specially that its against rules to create account for small children - I had to buy children games for my account.

A person has to be 13 or older te create an account. That does not mean that a person who is age 13 or older can not create an account for a child younger than 13. Family View is a thing and it exists for a reason.

Originally posted by Amikot:

Let confess that this is only because of greed and for love for money, because there is no another purpose.

Again, abuse is a real thing and it's a reason why it won't change. Unfortunately people can't do nice, so we can't have nice things.

Originally posted by Amikot:

that we don't like this policy of limiting us.

Speak for yourself. I've shared my library with my daughter and we have 0 issues.

[Kargor]

Well, that's nothing new.

However, family sharing is easy to "sell" to publishers, as it doesn't really change anything compared to just sharing the account. With family sharing there's no serious loss in business, as everyone will just get multiple licenses anyway.

Keep in mind that Steam giving out games for free is not going to be accepted by publishers. And a real family sharing, where you basically go back to just locking the "CD" for the one game you're playing instead of the entire CD collection, gets dangerously close to "free games" -- buy once and several people can use it with little to no restrictions.

I have been using it for testing purposes, like downloading a game on MacOS by family sharing to a separate account, to protect Steam cloud saves from getting trashed. But that's about it.

Of course, I don't know whether they have looked into better ways to setup family sharing, and how publishers would respond to that. As an example, they could focus on "family", and allow sharing only between accounts in the same LAN (so, when the kids grow up and leave home, family sharing won't work anymore unless they try VPN stuff). Also, "family" can be seen as parents and kids, so they could make accounts hierarchical and family share only to kid-accounts attached to the parent account -- again, if you want to get rid of your parents controlling your account you'll also loose the sharing.
So, there are options to make it both useful and less overarching -- but, again, one license getting used by several people may or may not go well with publishers, even if additional restrictions are in place.

[Amikot]

Your all answers are silly.
If sharing creates risk of selling access to library to other people, how its managed by Netflix that we can watch on many devices at once? How multiroom is managed by all these TV providers ?
I see so many solutions to prevent sharing library.
It can be based on ping over local network. If its lower than 2ms - than its local network if its over 2ms - someone is using VPN like hamachi to share library.

And one more. Using offline mode is workaround that I can do, but what if normal people will want to play at once - how could they manage this if they are not geeks?

All your answers assuming that steam customers are geeks. No - they are not, but they are still customers and want professional service, and yes - I'm talking for myself, but I can also talk for others that have similar opinion - maybe its not problem for all families . Maybe some are born with keyboard and mouse, and know how to cheat Steam and play in offline mode, but as I said - normal adults - that just using PC and infants (like 5-6 years) may have problems with this.
And after all some games needs online access - so don't say there is no problem.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Amikot:

Your all answers are silly.
If sharing creates risk of selling access to library to other people, how its managed by Netflix that we can watch on many devices at once? How multiroom is managed by all these TV providers ?
I see so many solutions to prevent sharing library.
It can be based on ping over local network. If its lower than 2ms - than its local network if its over 2ms - someone is using VPN like hamachi to share library.

And one more. Using offline mode is workaround that I can do, but what if normal people will want to play at once - how could they manage this if they are not geeks?

All your answers assuming that steam customers are geeks. No - they are not, but they are still customers and want professional service, and yes - I'm talking for myself, but I can also talk for others that have similar opinion - maybe its not problem for all families . Maybe some are born with keyboard and mouse, and know how to cheat Steam and play in offline mode, but as I said - normal adults - that just using PC and infants (like 5-6 years) may have problems with this.
And after all some games needs online access - so don't say there is no problem.

https://www.howtogeek.com/413360/why-netflix-doesnt-care-if-you-share-your-account/
https://www.altpress.com/news/netflix-account-sharing-tech/
https://qz.com/1689297/disney-to-crackdown-on-password-sharing/


Account sharing costs Netflix about 2.3 billion dollars a year. There isn't a good way to stop it, and any attempts to do so can horribly backfire and create a PR nightmare that costs them more then they would gain. They are looking into ways to prevent it though as are other streaming companies.

Your idea's are horrible.

1. You can family share with family that are not at your physical location, so your idea to limit it based on ping wouldn't work. Also even ping in the same house can vary, so your idea would trigger a lot of false positives and negatively impact steam.

2. The answers are its NOT designed to let 2 people play games on 1 account at once, the offline mode is a workaround that steam and developers are willing to allow as trying to crack down on it causes more harm then good just like netflix password sharing.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Amikot:

If sharing creates risk of selling access to library to other people, how its managed by Netflix that we can watch on many devices at once? How multiroom is managed by all these TV providers ?

Netflix wants to get rid of that, they're looking into ways to break sharing. They announced that last year already.

Originally posted by Amikot:

Using offline mode is workaround that I can do, but what if normal people will want to play at once - how could they manage this if they are not geeks?

They buy their own copies, as they're supposed to do.

Originally posted by Amikot:

All your answers assuming that steam customers are geeks.

Nope, any "normal" person can go into offline mode so that two people can play from the same library.
All the abuses mentioned are done by "normal" people, as it's not hard to do. You try to make excuses as to give false validity to your own thoughts, but that doesn't work.

Originally posted by Amikot:

And after all some games needs online access - so don't say there is no problem.

There is no problem, people can buy their own copies and play together. Only the freeloaders see a problem.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Amikot:

Yes: you don't need to answer - Family mode is useless.

And you are allowed your opinion. Seeing as you have answered for yourself, I will lock this up.