A real family share

[Eyesis]

Hello,

as a father of 2 children having hell lot of steam games I just realized the feature callled family share is not useful for families and it is very missleading.

Can you create a real family share feature?
From the very same location the parents and the children might play different games similtaniously. Like in real world we can play with our toys at the same time.

And please rename the current family share to something else which is not missleading like "Play instead of me" or something like this.


The realy family share feature might be a one time purchased feature or a subscription as well.

Thanks

[Nx Machina]

And in turn you could invite friends around and charge them money to access and play games from your library simultaneously, hence why it is not a feature.

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

If steam did that then no body would buy games and people will share games.

[Haruspex]

It's usually a good idea to consider how a less scrupulous person might abuse a feature. Yes, unlocking family share to allow multiple games to be played at once would be more convenient for you, but it would open up a whole world of renting out accounts for commercial purposes. Or even non-commercial purposes. Whole family sharing circles would develop of people who elect to share their libraries with others and everyone can just play everyone else's games. This would put a definite negative pressure on sales, since why buy a new game when you can just access it through some family sharing group.

Instead, consider workarounds like using offline mode.

As a father myself, I highly recommend you begin putting together Steam libraries for each of your children anyway. This way, you're not clogging your personal library up with "Putt Putt Goes to the Moon" and such. Also your kids will appreciate a personal Steam library they can call their own as they get older. I'm sure there will be games that one will want but the other won't be interested in. They'll really appreciate it later if you start to develop their personal libraries now.

Depending on how into PC gaming your kids are, I find Steam gift cards make good birthday presents and/or stocking stuffers. They will be able to have the freedom to buy their own games and build their own libraries as they see fit.

Remember though all this, you can use Steam Family View to restrict what they're able to do and see.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

I tell you story from the past, back when PS3 was newest console on the block Sony through it be cool to do family sharing idea you have with 5 consoles, the problem blew up because people would RENT out their family share to others, not only that they make multiple accounts, buy games, then repeat the process to share with more people.

Sony didn't like what con artist were doing using them as a rental service to make profit off them, hence the point of the problem, not only this, but this also added security issues like stolen accounts, fruad for chargebacks, and more... Yeah it blew up badly to the point Sony had to take action they updated security to try ban people for multiple account sharing, they were banning systems, and they reduce family sharing from 5 to 3. On PS4 release it only 1 other system can family share yeah that even less than PS3. So you realize why Sony not exactly happy what people were doing, but they didn't want Xbox to have upper hand against them for trying win consumer points, even Microsoft were banning people, and system that get caught doing family sharing across the world.

Anyways bottom line it up to Valve if they want to take the risks, and problems Sony first had to deal with, and there no doubt there will be people that will go out of their way to try rent out their accounts, steal accounts, or commit fruad with chargebacks.

Here a tip if you, or kids play single player only, just have the account in offline mode, you/they can just play the game all you want that single player offline, then you/they can family share play multiplayer games online.

[76561198407601200]

Escrito originalmente por Eyesis:

Hello,

as a father of 2 children having hell lot of steam games I just realized the feature callled family share is not useful for families and it is very missleading.

Can you create a real family share feature?
From the very same location the parents and the children might play different games similtaniously. Like in real world we can play with our toys at the same time.

And please rename the current family share to something else which is not missleading like "Play instead of me" or something like this.


The realy family share feature might be a one time purchased feature or a subscription as well.

Thanks

That isn't how family sharing works outside of steam. As a father of 2 children if you were to have a game console you would likely only have 1 to share with 1 library of games. If 1 child is gaming the other would have to wait until that console/library is free which they can then game. That exact concept is what steam's family sharing is based on. While you may have more than 1 pc in the home, it would still be 1 library as in my example.

[[N]ebsun]

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

That isn't how family sharing works outside of steam. As a father of 2 children if you were to have a game console you would likely only have 1 to share with 1 library of games. If 1 child is gaming the other would have to wait until that console/library is free which they can then game. That exact concept is what steam's family sharing is based on. While you may have more than 1 pc in the home, it would still be 1 library as in my example.

That is not how family sharing worked... we had 3 PCs in 1998, and could play Doom, Quake, Myst, or whatever other games we had on each PC simultaneously - 1 set of games (library), and could play each individual game at the same time as any other.

Steam is for PC games, not consoles - not sure why you would mention consoles on Steam.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Escrito originalmente por Eyesis:

Hello,

as a father of 2 children having hell lot of steam games I just realized the feature callled family share is not useful for families and it is very missleading.

They were very up front of how it work, so I wouldn't say it was misleading.

Family share works fine for my family. I will run in off-line mode if my son is playing one of my games and he knows I have priority of my account. In turn, if he is really interested in a game and wants to keep playing it, then it is worth buying his own copy.

[76561198407601200]

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

That isn't how family sharing works outside of steam. As a father of 2 children if you were to have a game console you would likely only have 1 to share with 1 library of games. If 1 child is gaming the other would have to wait until that console/library is free which they can then game. That exact concept is what steam's family sharing is based on. While you may have more than 1 pc in the home, it would still be 1 library as in my example.

That is not how family sharing worked... we had 3 PCs in 1998, and could play Doom, Quake, Myst, or whatever other games we had on each PC simultaneously - 1 set of games (library), and could play each individual game at the same time as any other.

Steam is for PC games, not consoles - not sure why you would mention consoles on Steam.

So you took my example of how steam family sharing works akin to 1 household 1 console 1 set of games, somehow disregarded it then dribbled on about the same issue brought up about how family sharing should work? Some people are so advanced that it is baffeling.

[[N]ebsun]

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Steam is for PC games, not consoles - not sure why you would mention consoles on Steam.

So you took my example of how steam family sharing works akin to 1 household 1 console 1 set of games, somehow disregarded it then dribbled on about the same issue brought up about how family sharing should work? Some people are so advanced that it is baffeling.

Where does this whole "1 console" thing come from ?? what are you on about ? Steam is for PC, and people have more than 1 PC - Steam is just a collection of games... like the box of games I have lying around, that I can install on any PC, and I can play any 2 or more games from that collection simultaneously on different PCs

[Nx Machina]

Escrito originalmente por Nebsun:

Steam is for PC games, not consoles - not sure why you would mention consoles on Steam.

When Family Sharing is the topic, Consoles are brought into the equation while completely ignoring the fact that having only "one console" in a house means only "one person" can play and why The Living Tribunal posted:

Escrito originalmente por The Living Tribunal:

a game console

He did not mentioned multiple consoles.

[Pickle Wick]

naw this topic is so gate kept its ridiculous, funny thing is that its usually the same 5 people that are opposed to the idea of changing anything at all, i even suggested only changing the name to something a little more accurate like "Library lending" as the term is much more accurate and less misleading but they are even opposed to that small of a change.

this topic has been brought up so many times i feel that steam staff should at least address the community publicly about it as it is obviously an important feature to allot of people...

What can you do? well until they listen and implement something that actually works for people sharing their games with families then i would suggest buying your games from Gog when possible as you are in 100% control of your data and though your technically not allowed to share those files with others when i contacted their support they stated that those rules are more addressing the transfer to friends or other unrelated parties, those rules were never meant to be enforced on your children. I have a screenshot of the email on my profile. so as of right now Gog is a more family friendly platform,

there are obviously other measures that you could take to allow your kids to play your steam games but I cant mention them here as the steam community mods don't like me much and I just got let out of steam jail early because the mods are a bit touchy on these subjects.

[ChuckTusing]

I have the same issue as the OP. My oldest son started gaming mildly on my PC at 6. At that point, no, no decent parent wants to create a stand-alone account for such a young child. And who is really thinking years ahead to read the family-sharing policy to realize I should have more than one Steam account in the off chance years from now I decide to get another PC?

There are plenty of reasonable options here, including a REAL family-sharing policy. Lock the share to a single IP address; which addresses the sharing of content to others.

Or give me a better way to manage my games and my sons games under a single account with the understanding that when I feel comfortable as a parent, I will release my son into his own account, and those games transfer then.

[Piston Smashed™]

Steam is a single user account, it does NOT do family accounts. Yes there is Family Sharing on some games if the developers allow them to be shared. If you want to share the games with your kids at the same time as you playing a game then one of you must on in to offline mode.

Steam is a DRM and only allows one game to be played at a time from an account because it was created that way. Back in the day people would share game codes, Steam stopped this by locking down the game codes to an account, one user playing one game from one account, a single user account which is why you cannot play multiple games on multiple devices from the same account while connected to the internet because if you could then it would be abused like it was before Steam was created and would go totally against why Steam was created (along with an easier way of keeping our games up to date) for in the first place.

[martin-*****]

I think very many people are misinterpreting what you're saying, but I totally agree! We have Steam Decks and my kid can not play one of my no longer played games on his Deck while I play an entirely differently game on mine. Because, apparently shared libraries across systems are just not allowed.

In this age of technology all these things are quite easily solved.

I'm very upset at how useless this thing is for us.

[ZeeSvk]

Escrito originalmente por Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

I tell you story from the past, back when PS3 was newest console on the block Sony through it be cool to do family sharing idea you have with 5 consoles, the problem blew up because people would RENT out their family share to others, not only that they make multiple accounts, buy games, then repeat the process to share with more people.

Sony didn't like what con artist were doing using them as a rental service to make profit off them, hence the point of the problem, not only this, but this also added security issues like stolen accounts, fruad for chargebacks, and more... Yeah it blew up badly to the point Sony had to take action they updated security to try ban people for multiple account sharing, they were banning systems, and they reduce family sharing from 5 to 3. On PS4 release it only 1 other system can family share yeah that even less than PS3. So you realize why Sony not exactly happy what people were doing, but they didn't want Xbox to have upper hand against them for trying win consumer points, even Microsoft were banning people, and system that get caught doing family sharing across the world.

Anyways bottom line it up to Valve if they want to take the risks, and problems Sony first had to deal with, and there no doubt there will be people that will go out of their way to try rent out their accounts, steal accounts, or commit fruad with chargebacks.

Here a tip if you, or kids play single player only, just have the account in offline mode, you/they can just play the game all you want that single player offline, then you/they can family share play multiplayer games online.

yeah sadly this is why we cant have nice things. cause people abuse goodwill of others. And everyone else who would use it normally looses.