Play Together

[Eldin]

You know when your cousin/friend that doesn't usually play/buy games comes to you, and you want to play something together?
Or you want to try out game together with another family member that usually don't play games (parent, brother/sister, wife/husband, etc.)
But you don't want to buy another copy because maybe you'll be playing that game only once with them, or they are not playing that game because of the game, but because they're playing it together with you.

So here's my suggestion and how would it work:
It would be something similar to Family Sharing, but to avoid some people exploiting this feature there are some rules.

So, how would it work.
First, you enable Family Sharing with the second account, and then enable Play Together feature.
With Play Together, those two accounts could play the same game at the same time.
Let's say I launch F.E.A.R. 3 on my account and I Family shared and enabled Play Together on second account that my cousin is using.
He will be able to launch only F.E.A.R. 3 and not any other game from my Library.
Then we would be able to play CO-OP together.

How to prevent exploiting this feature so some people can't use it to rent account with games:

• We already can enable Family Sharing to up to 5 accounts and 10 computers.
  But you would be able to enable Play Together to only 1 Account / PC at one time.
  
• With current Family Sharing, account B can only play games from account A Library if account A doesn't play anything.
  With Play Together, while account A is playing F.E.A.R. 3 for example, account B can only play F.E.A.R. 3 and not any other game from account A Library.
  
• Every time account B tries to launch game that account A is currently playing, account B has to type username, password and guard code of account A.
  This is because this feature is for when you both are in the same room and want to play together. So you would have to type in your username and password to their laptop or your second PC, and then you would have to type in guard code from your phone.

Why this should be a feature:

• Reasons I said at the beginning of the post
  
• You want to play something together with your family member but you don't have enough money to buy two copies of the game.
  
• Game is no longer being sold on the store so there's no way for purchasing it on second account
  
• Multiplayer is dead and it's not worth purchasing the whole game just because you two will play it together few times.
  
• Multiplayer is totally different experience from single player and you don't know will both of you like it until you try it.
  
• You want to convince your friend to buy that game so you can play it together anywhere anytime. So when he comes to your house, you two can play it together via Play Together feature and when he sees how good that game is, he might decide to buy it.

I wanted to type few more but I forgot them while writing this

Note: If some developers don't like this feature, they can easily opt out same as they opt out from Family Sharing.
And because this feature is depending on Family Sharing, if game doesn't support Family Sharing in the first place, this feature won't work too.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

You'd be hard pressed to find any game dev to opt into letting users play their miltiplayer games together for free.

And we have a system for that already...

Free week/weekends. Game devs can already do this.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

You'd be hard pressed to find any game dev to opt into letting users play their miltiplayer games together for free.

Technically, we do play their multiplayer games for free when using Family Sharing.
I shared my library to my brother and he can play for example Killing Floor 2 online same as if he bought it (while I'm not playing anything)

This feature would just allow us for example to play KF2 together.
He would be able to launch KF2 only if I'm also currently playing it, so we can play togehter.
If I launch any other game on my account, he would get kicked out of the game. So he wouldn't have access to other games in my Library while I'm playing something else.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Read the edit.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Read the edit.

How long you'd have to wait for game you want to try out to get free weekend?
And most of the older and dead games never get free weekend.

And if your friend/cousin is coming today and he'll stay for few days, what are the chances that games you'd like to play together are on free weekend?

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Read the edit.

How long you'd have to wait for game you want to try out to get free weekend?
And most of the older and dead games never get free weekend.

And if your friend/cousin is coming today and he'll stay for few days, what are the chances that games you'd like to play together are on free weekend?

If they never go on a free week/weekend, how do you expect them to opt into this? Especially as you stated, "most of the older and dead games."

The option exists for game devs to use. It is their choice whether or not to use it.

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by Eldin:

How long you'd have to wait for game you want to try out to get free weekend?
And most of the older and dead games never get free weekend.

And if your friend/cousin is coming today and he'll stay for few days, what are the chances that games you'd like to play together are on free weekend?

If they never go on a free week/weekend, how do you expect them to opt into this? Especially as you stated, "most of the older and dead games."

The option exists for game devs to use. It is their choice whether or not to use it.

Same as Family Sharing.
As I can see, Family Sharing is enabled by default for those "older and dead games" and all other games.
Only if dev opted out of Family Sharing, or they're using 3rd party DRM, Family Sharing is not working.
Basically, same rules that applies to Family Sharing would apply to Play Together. But devs could also choose to opt out of Play Together but keep opted in Family Sharing if they want.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Well thought out post, but youre forgetting the main sticking point: the license

The license is for a person. Family sharing allows you to share the license (1 person can use it at a time).

You essentially want a second, temporary license.

I dont see that happening.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

If they never go on a free week/weekend, how do you expect them to opt into this? Especially as you stated, "most of the older and dead games."

The option exists for game devs to use. It is their choice whether or not to use it.

Same as Family Sharing.
As I can see, Family Sharing is enabled by default for those "older and dead games" and all other games.
Only if dev opted out of Family Sharing, or they're using 3rd party DRM, Family Sharing is not working.
Basically, same rules that applies to Family Sharing would apply to Play Together. But devs could also choose to opt out of Play Together but keep opted in Family Sharing if they want.

How would they opt out of it if they are no longer caring about their dead game but still want the sales for said games?

[Eldin]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by Eldin:

Same as Family Sharing.
As I can see, Family Sharing is enabled by default for those "older and dead games" and all other games.
Only if dev opted out of Family Sharing, or they're using 3rd party DRM, Family Sharing is not working.
Basically, same rules that applies to Family Sharing would apply to Play Together. But devs could also choose to opt out of Play Together but keep opted in Family Sharing if they want.

How would they opt out of it if they are no longer caring about their dead game but still want the sales for said games?

Playing Together wouldn't reduce number of sales any more than Family Sharing.
If they opted out of Family Sharing before, Playing Together wouldn't work either.

It wouldn't reduce number of sales because if game is dead, you wouldn't buy that second copy anyways because:
-Person B could still play it and finish the game via Family Sharing
-Person B wouldn't buy that game because of multiplayer because it's dead.
Only reason to play that game is to play it with person A

[Eldin]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Well thought out post, but youre forgetting the main sticking point: the license

The license is for a person. Family sharing allows you to share the license (1 person can use it at a time).

You essentially want a second, temporary license.

I dont see that happening.

Good comment.
But, because you mentioned "temporary license", You get that temporary license when you activate free weekend, and there's nothing wrong with that.

This would be similar to that temporary license, so I don't see any problems with law or anything.
And it wouldn't be forced to developers or anything because if they don't like it, they can just opt out. Simple as that.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

Originally posted by Eldin:

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Well thought out post, but youre forgetting the main sticking point: the license

The license is for a person. Family sharing allows you to share the license (1 person can use it at a time).

You essentially want a second, temporary license.

I dont see that happening.

Good comment.
But, because you mentioned "temporary license", You get that temporary license when you activate free weekend, and there's nothing wrong with that.

This would be similar to that temporary license, so I don't see any problems with law or anything.
And it wouldn't be forced to developers or anything because if they don't like it, they can just opt out. Simple as that.

I could se this working, maybe, but you have to add something: a time limit, in hours before family member B has to buy the game.

8 hours of playtime, or 12 or something seems fair; thats how the free weekend passes work, I think?

[Snapjak]

It's already going to be a thing with the next Wolfenstein, one person buys the digital deluxe and they can send out a guest pass to a friend who can then play the whole game with them.

But that's not on Steam (yet).

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

That's right, devs have guess passes too. Thanks for the reminder.

See, another feature that is already a thing.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steamworks#Free_Weekends_and_Guest_Passes

[Eldin]

Originally posted by AmsterdamHeavy:

Originally posted by Eldin:

Good comment.
But, because you mentioned "temporary license", You get that temporary license when you activate free weekend, and there's nothing wrong with that.

This would be similar to that temporary license, so I don't see any problems with law or anything.
And it wouldn't be forced to developers or anything because if they don't like it, they can just opt out. Simple as that.

I could se this working, maybe, but you have to add something: a time limit, in hours before family member B has to buy the game.

8 hours of playtime, or 12 or something seems fair; thats how the free weekend passes work, I think?

You can play free weekend game for any amount of hours until free weekend ends. And you can play it again on all next free weekends.

This feature could be "you can play that game for any amount of hours while person A is playing it too"
Same as Family Sharing is "you can play any of those games for any amount of hours while person A is not playing anything"

Originally posted by Snapjak:

It's already going to be a thing with the next Wolfenstein, one person buys the digital deluxe and they can send out a guest pass to a friend who can then play the whole game with them.

But that's not on Steam (yet).

That's nice. Developers are trying out new things that would enhance player's experience.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

That's right, devs have guess passes too. Thanks for the reminder.

See, another feature that is already a thing.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steamworks#Free_Weekends_and_Guest_Passes

Nice, but not many games give you that. And guest pass gives you full access to the game for a limited time.

Feature I'm suggesting would limit your ability to play game so you can just play it together with person A.

All reasons why Family Sharing shouldn't be a feature applies to Play Together, and vice versa.
But Family Sharing is an existing feature.

And btw, only reason why your family member can't play Serious Sam from your Library while you're playing The Talos Principle is because that would open up Family Sharing for exploitation and some people would rent their large libraries to others and earn money that way.

Play Together eliminates that by forcing you to be in the same room while launching the game, and fact that you can play only that same game together because person B wouldn't be able to launch any other games from person's A Library.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Also, some games don't need Steam to play. Abuse would be even greater if users catch on.