Herb Apr 15, 2020 @ 9:12am
Family Sharing does not account for free weekends...
...and it should!

Risk of Rain 2 was on free weekend from April 2-6. I downloaded it from the store page as you would any free-weekend game and assumed it was now bound to my account in some way, opened and happily played it for a good while (whatever my current time played is). Then, on April 4th, in the very middle of the free weekend, it kicked me off because apparently someone in my Family Library Sharing already owned Risk of Rain 2, and it assumed I was using his copy instead of my own free-weekend copy, and of course he didn't think it would kick me off. It makes absolutely no sense that it should do this- in fact, I should have been able to play it WITH him!

In my message to support staff I likened this to when one person normally lends you their Nintendo DS (they can't use it while you're using it, which makes sense), but then someone else offers to lend you their DS for a little while and during that time you're not allowed to play at the same time as the original friend, who has their own DS, just because they happen to own the same game that this completely different person is lending you, going as far as to stop you from playing even when they're playing a completely different game and preventing you from trying the multiplayer of the shared game with that friend.

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In short, Family Sharing and Free Weekend Games need to account for each other in some way so that you can play free weekend games with a family member who happens to already own it without being kicked off.
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Something else to note that I probably should have been more upset about: I didn't receive a reply from Steam Support for 3 days (submitted April 4th, reply received April 7th- the day after the free weekend had officially ended), and the response I received was just a "forwarding this on to the appropriate department" and "please make a post at the Suggestions/Ideas section of the Steam Discussion forums" although, granted, Floyd worded it much more professionally. Still, a non-answer with no workaround or explanation as to why it currently works this way not posted until after the free weekend has ended is worthless.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 comments
cSg|mc-Hotsauce Apr 15, 2020 @ 9:13am 
The bane of the Sharing system is that free games can not be shared so, you will be using the game from the shared library.

This is most likely never going to change since nothing about free games and sharing have never changed.

:qr:
Last edited by cSg|mc-Hotsauce; Apr 15, 2020 @ 9:14am
Aachen Apr 15, 2020 @ 9:15am 
Support’s job is to handle account/billing issues. They consistently push users to post suggestions or ideas for Steam here—partially (IMO) as a way to give so-situated people something to feel they’ve effected some action.
Psymon² Apr 15, 2020 @ 2:02pm 
I agree with you about the conflict between free weekend and shared library.

You should technically be playing your own copy.
Therefore, it shouldn't kick you when your "family" member starts playing their copy.

This sounds like an oversight, a bug causing a conflict between the two systems.

On the other hand, why would someone wait until a free weekend to play a game you can access anytime?
Unless it's in order to try and play together online/co-op?

I'm guessing a temporary work around would be to remove the share, and restore it after the free weekend?
Bit of a pain though :L
Family Share is designed to only work by sharing entire libraries at a time, but even that doesn't explain this issue. It seems that in this case the Steam client is somehow having the "is this game in another user's shared library" check override the "is this account playing the game on free weekend" check.

Quite silly of them, honestly.
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Date Posted: Apr 15, 2020 @ 9:12am
Posts: 4