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it is working as intended. if you are buying all the games on one account, that is your decision, not steams. remember, only 1 account can access an accounts library at any time. instead of buying all the games on one account, try buying the games your kids like to play on their accounts.
if both kids want to play the same game at the same time, the account that owns the game needs to be OFFLINE, then the other account can play as well.
and steam was correct, you not liking it or trying to nitpick it does not make it incorrect. only 1 account can play a game from the library at any given time. it does not mean you can have 2 accounts playing different games from the same library.
Family share was designed for a single house family with a single computer to have their own accounts but share the games from one main account.
Its not meant for homes that can afford more than one computer at a time. Everyone in the home should have their own account and should have their own games.
And yes this is more expensive, but what family share is, is what Valve and the developers agreed to. Please understand the developers could have easily said "No, everyone MUST have their own game on their own account." But the majority of them didn't. Though at any point they could pull a game from family sharing.
What you want will cost Valve and more importantly game developers LOTS of money because people will be renting out their accounts to others. "What to play X game, give me 10 bucks and you can play it for a month" Now that person doesn't need to buy the 70 dollar game because they paid 10 bucks to play it and beat it along with other games.
If you got your way, you could say good bye to really good sales on games, no more being able to buy really cheap games in bundles from bundle sites. You would even seen more games moving towards subscription models where to play the game you have to keep giving them money every single money. It would also include very invasive DRM to protect against all the piracy that would also come with it all.
So stop buying all the games for just one account, buy them individually on each account, wait for sales if you have to.
On top of that, it basically just annoys users: you can simply work around it by creating a new account for every game you buy, so the limitation itself is useless.
@wolfKnight What do you mean with "the account that owns the game needs to be OFFLINE, then the other account can play as well." Do I understand correctly that if CHILD A owns a game, but is playing a game from my library, that child B cannot play the game that is owned by child A?
If so, then it is even means that you have one dedicated account for each game you buy, and one account for each child/family member that wants to play.
This should be a lot better documented. I am for now unable to find back that this is how you can get family view to share games, not libraries. Just a useless limitation that puts a lot of burden on the end user. Not very user friendly if you ask me. Who makes up these things?
Here is a little hint,,, yes they do care. Why do I know this? Because Valve doesn't force game companies to require this stuff.
The company themselves choose to make this a requirement. There are lots of DRM free games on Steam which you can find using google or any other search engine.
Developers/publishers/IP owners had been looking for ways to stop people from selling used copies of their games and running their games on more than 1 PC at a time (though they did use the requirement of needing a disk/CD in the drive to play (you seen to not remember this)). Then always on internet connections came along and became common. Till then they didn't have a way to stop people from selling used copies or sharing games.
Again how hard is it to understand that THQ has the option to make their game DRM free so that you don't even need to start Steam at all to run the game. But they didn't.
Same goes for EVERY developer who requires Steam to be running to play their game. They made the ACTIVE CHOICE to do that. Valve did not force them to do that because as I have already pointed out, there are MANY DRM free games on Steam that don't even require Steam to be running.
They know what the limits of of family sharing are and they are allowing their game to be shared.
They know what limits are on games that require Steam DRM to run and they purposely made the choice for their game to require Steam DRM.
Valve didn't force them. Valve didn't say do it or else. Valve simply said, "Here is the code needed for your game to require Steam DRM, include it in your game if you want." And how do I know this? I point to the fact that there are many DRM free games on Steam, including games that do not require Steam itself to run.
The GAME DEVELOPERS made that choice. You thinking otherwise won't change things. Either ask the game developer to change their minds or go buy the game(s) on the other account and disconnect the 2 from family sharing.
Its also very obvious that Family Sharing was designed for homes with 2 or more people that would be playing games but only 1 computer. Meaning the 2 accounts would not be online at the same time. It was never designed to allow 2 or more games to play all the games off a main account.
I don't do family sharing because I know what its limits are and I don't like those limits so I wait till sales come on to buy games I want on more than one account, or I go looking at bundle sites to see if I can find them cheap in bundles.
That is Valve being as pro-consumer as they can be. They wouldn't even be doing that if the majority of developers came back and said "heck no, do that and we'll take our games else where."
The way its setup is what the majority of game developers/publishers/IP owners agreed with at the time.
So you can not and should not put this all on Valve.
And yet again I mention, the game developer can choose to use the Steam DRM or to go DRM free. If they use the Steam DRM, that means they are 100% ok with the limit. Heck they even have the option to use the Steam DRM and turn off the ability to family share their game.
So be thankful its even on there to start with.
"I want to play my own games, but they're being played by another account. What do I do?
As the owner, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when another user is already playing one of your games, he/she will see a message giving them five minutes to either purchase or quit out of the game."
"Can two users share a library and both play at the same time?
No, a shared library may only be played by one user at a time including the owner and even if they want to play different games."
Perhaps the second question's answer could be rephrased to some degree, but overall the documentation seems clear to me.
They will discredit you in any way they can think of.
They will even go to your Bio (whatever) page and say
"you've only been a member for... pffft 50 years and you've only purchased... pfffft 50 games so the "developers" aren't really going to miss your business."
Ironically, they're arguing to disprove themselves because if developers wouldn't miss someone's
business - then they wouldn't need this ridiculous VALVE "rule."
Soon the argument that stealing would be easier than being honest - yet I'm honest or I wouldn't
be having this conversation - will start.
Which is around the time the guy who "was a developer" will show up and "explain" how rough it
is to exist in a world full of thieves.
In the end - you'll be 200 to 400 responses deep in this - they'll go get a "moderator"
to delete the entire thread.
People before me warned me of all this - and their replies were lost in the thread - as my reply
now will be lost in this thread.
They'll just keep coming at you. You'll eventually slip up and say a "bad" word so they can start to flag you.
They'll just keep saying the same, non-related silliness, over and over, again.
The fact remains - it is absolutely ridiculous to expect me to buy 12 copies of the SAME game - so little Bobby can play Crash while little Suzy plays Mario. There should be no reason I as the adult with the credit card shouldn't be able to buy one copy of EACH game - share my ONE library - and allow 12 kids to simultaneously play 12 DIFFERENT games.
One last thing - you'll never have the last say/post in all this. Even if all the last reply is, is 3 words:
rainbows and bubblegum - they'll need to have the last reply be "rainbows are proof that no one
should be allowed to play 12 DIFFERENT games at the same time."
False, you cannot add additional licenses without your own account which would solve hte issue.
Also support was correct that family share allows you to share the game to one user at a time.
It's unlikely to be changed because it would be abused, and the developers have the final say if their game can be shared, and the developers as is can opt out of family sharing. The current restrictions was the compromise Valve made with them to get developers to agree to ANY game sharing.
No, that's the actual problem: you are NEVER sharing a game: you are sharing a library. I want to share a game to one user at a time. Nothing more, nothing less. But exactly that does not work. You can only share **ALL** your games to one user at a time. So only one of my children can play a steam game I bought. All other games I bought are then also blocked.
My understanding is that they inspired the family share to how a console work. So, if child A is playing game 1 on the console, child B is unable to play game 2 on the same console. Game creators may add support for local multiplay on the same console, then both children may play at the same time game 3 on the console.
The issue with that it that it doesn't replicate accordingly when we have 2 PCs at home. If each PC was a console, both children could play games 1 and 2 on their console, while buying a single disk. That's not possible with family share.
We're unduced to believe the best way is for father having his account and buying all games on that so it gets organized then share his account to his children, but in fact it locks all the ppl to only be able to play 1 game per time.
The best solution I see is indeed split games on both children accounts, gifting each game to the child that most will play it then have a child "lend" his games to his brother by family sharing. Then each child is able to play his own games simultaneously or 1 child play a lent game.
Indeed that gets worse as the amount of children grows.
Sharing a library results in the sharing of the game. Its flat out told up front you can only share 1 game at a time, so again their wording is correct. Everyone knows what you want, it just won't happen because it would facilitate widescale abuse and every dev would pull their game from family sharing.
Not really, they just had to restrict it to get dev's to agree to it. Its not modeled after a console persay. There just had to be a lot of restrictions because without it people would just buy 1 copy of a game and share with everyone versus buying their own copies costing developers billions.
That's indeed the trap I felt for. But it's unfortunately not the case.
My solution:
* 1 account per game you buy
* 1 account per user who wants to play.
With that setup, all games can be played by all users. Just not the same game at the same time. I assumed that was how family view worked. Quod non :-(
Luckily we have a password manager these days to remember all usernames and passwords for this setup. User friendly: no, not at all. But you are forced.