Is it impossible to be a family from different countries?

[Shmstr]

I wanted to create a family with my friends using the new function, but it tells them that it is impossible because of different countries. Is there a way around this? Their region is Russia and mine is Spain

[Septic Loyalist]

With the new steam family sharing system the family part has been cut out while only localizing the family space selling abuse. If they wanted to fix people selling family space they could've added a stipulation like "being friends for a year before you can add them" to make it unprofitable to abuse it, instead they've stopped actual family members from sharing their games based on living situation so family has nothing to do with it, without actually fixing the scamming issues. Plus it says it's based on purchase history which people have reported isn't the case in many situations, and that it's specific to households which is also inconsistent, some people in the same household can't share while some can share with people hundreds of miles away. The system isn't functional and even if it were functioning as intended all it would do is alienate people who can't manage to all live in the same place IE the people that would find the most value in this feature. It went from something that helps connect families to something that enforces one strict vision of a family and then fails to even execute on that flawed design.
The idea is bad, the execution is bad and it fixed nothing while breaking lots.

[Madasaur]

Well this does suck.
I moved from one country to another after marrying my now wife, but it states that as our steam accounts have the majority of our purchases we cannot make use of the new Family library, despite the fact that we now live i nthe same coutnry together and even have our PCs in the same room.

[Tommy]

This is an obvious move made to grab a few extra money from consumers! If me and my sister don't live in the same country we are not family anymore?

[tey_ull]

all people who defend this feature clearly have no experience with family members being far away, I guess now if you have a dad that works in germany who wants to share his library with you you can't!

[FFL2and3rocks]

Originally posted by tey_ull:

all people who defend this feature clearly have no experience with family members being far away, I guess now if you have a dad that works in germany who wants to share his library with you you can't!

Maybe he's not your dad and you're just pretending he is because you want to play his games for free. Sucks, but you can thank the people who abused it.

[Pscht]

And all the "gimmes" seem to forget that THERE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ANY KIND OF FAMILY SHARING WHATSOEVER. They could turn that off tomorrow and it would be completely their right to do it.

[76561198407601200]

Originally posted by Tommy:

This is an obvious move made to grab a few extra money from consumers! If me and my sister don't live in the same country we are not family anymore?

Family sharing itself not only does not generate extra money but in fact causes a loss of money. Realistically if a game is family shared, the person it is shared to is very unlikely to purchase the game for themselves, hence loss of money for developers. This was on top if being able to play only 1 game at a time per shared library something that was complained about. Family sharing has been changed so the people need to be in the same country, this prevents the abuse that was happening previously where people would purchase the game cheaper elsewhere and then rent out the library. They've also added the 1 year cooldown to prevent library hopping. Odd that none of the abuse that users were doing was brought up in your post. Essentially family sharing is more or less the same, it does not generate extra money as it is allowing people to share their library and others use that library without having to purchase a copy for themselves, limiting it to sharing per-country does not change that fact.

[ireta_san]

That's insane: my husband and I live in the same house, but our accounts ended up in different countries since my recent new account is literary impossible to place in the same region as my husband's old account (Russia). So we cannot use Family Sharing even using the same computers! If I ever want to create an account for our child - it will be placed again wherever in the world possible but not in our ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Russian region, so the child will also never be connected to our accounts. They really should have thought about this stupid sanctions situation better. There are millions of russian steam users around the globe with both old and new accounts.

[Pscht]

Where IS your account located, then? And why can't he change his?

[CoolNumber9]

Yeah this feature sucks. My daughter moved to the Netherlands and now we can't share games.

[Glass Mother]

Originally posted by Shmstr:

I wanted to create a family with my friends

Well, you've already answered your own question, haven't you? Right there in the first sentence ...

[Maldecta]

Originally posted by 𝚇𝙸𝙸𝙸:

Originally posted by Shmstr:

I wanted to create a family with my friends

Well, you've already answered your own question, haven't you? Right there in the first sentence ...

Yeah... nah. My gene donors aren't family, and the people who are functionally family aren't genetically related, and have spread out over time. Hell, even if I did use my closest genetic parallels as family, they're 1000s of miles away. This system is out of touch and fubar. There's plenty of ways to avoid punishing actual families of people while disrupting scammers. Time gating, showing mutual activity, using public/private key systems or trust-word systems... but valve goes to the dumbest, most bullpie Nuclear-Family-1950's-ass-McCarthy-2.5-kids-and-a-dog tripe they can come up with.

[J]

So this new feature is just a problem. Good job Steam!
I want to continue sharing my games with my sister, i dont give a *** that i moved few houndred km away to another country in europe. I'm still in europe, region of game bought is europe!

[-bg]

you need to be in the same country because the steam family needs it

[ZonkedOutZombie]

Originally posted by The Living Tribunal:

Originally posted by ZonkedOutZombie:

So you're telling me that spouses can't live in different countries? My fiancée and I currently share games and now we won't be able to until I get to move closer to her which with how the world is going right now, won't be for a long while. This family sharing features sucks ass.

Spouses can live in different countries, however to family share the accounts need to be in the same country.

The point of my comment went over your head I see. I know it needs to be in the same country. Which is why I am saying it sucks ass. Because spouses that live in different countries the majority of the year, like myself and my fiancée, will no longer be able to share their games with one another. It's unfair in that sense.