Yet another Family Library Sharing issue

[bee]

Howdy! Through the many, many other troubleshooting threads here and on Reddit that I have come across, none have exactly matched my predicament.

The issue here is that, for many moons now my spouse and I have been able to share our libraries to each other, across the two main gaming computers in our home. Now though, my granted access to their steam account seems to have stopped working! Everything looks right on my end, at my computer signed in to my own steam account, however when I log in to my account on their client at their computer, I am unable to access the family sharing options in steam settings.

http://puu.sh/KfSjF/072d23f127.png

There are a couple odd things about my case that make it seem unique to the other threads I've read, including that within steam settings, my account appears offline even though the client is in online mode, and I am signed in to Friends Chat.

http://puu.sh/KfSka/f444511805.png

And that under the Friends dropdown in the main client, the "Offline" option is permanently ticked, unable to select any other option.

http://puu.sh/KfSkf/917aefc304.png

I have tried everything; ending the process directly, signing in and out, switching accounts back and forth. Nothing works. Note that on my own computer, none of these issues arise. I can turn on my library sharing and everything. Nope! Actually it doesn't work on my own computer now either, and now all of the above issues present when I am logged in to my own account on the computer I normally use. When I send a borrow request to myself from my spouse's steam account, it fails and says I must enable family sharing while logged into my own account on their computer, which obviously I cannot do as the menu for it has disappeared. Help pls!

[AlexTec]

The same thing happens to me, the button has disappeared and I can't give authorization in any other way. If someone can give a solution, thank you.

[Ogami]

For both of you, the old family share system has been deactivated and has been replaced by the new "Steam Families" system that came out of BETA last week.

In the new system you need to create a "Steam Family" in your client settings and then you can invite others to it simply by sending out an invite.
Anyone who accepts is now part of your "Steam Family" and everyone in the family automatically shares all their games with every other member.
There is no need to log into each others computer and authorize sharing anymore, its now completely linked to your account, not the hardware.

Also there are some new restrictions, all family members must be from the same country and have their store region set to the same one.
If you leave a Family or get kicked there is a 1 year cooldown before you can create/join another one.

On the plus side, now there is no play limit anymore, meaning multiple members of the Steam Family can play shared games from the same library at the same time. Basically all shared game licenses go into a combined sharing pool and anyone in the family can grab any currently unused game license to play the game. If you have more then one member with the same game then there will be multiple licenses available. So if 3 members of the family own the same game, up to 3 can play it at the same time.

Also you now can play shared games in Steam Offline mode.

Here is the Steam Familes FAQ:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4

[AlexTec]

It can't be, I used it until today when it failed and my friends still have it and use it.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by AlexTec:

It can't be, I used it until today when it failed and my friends still have it and use it.

The old system is still active for users who had set it up prior to the release of Steam Families but its only a grace period before it will stop working completely.
If it stops because of a bug or similar like in your case there is NO way to set it up again because the options have been removed from the client.
The same will happen to your friends over the next few weeks.
From now on Steam Families will be the only way to share games.