Steam Family Sharing to all.

[digitalnav]

Valve has opened up Steam Family Sharing to all.

Share your computer?
Now share your games too.

Steam Family Library Sharing allows family members and their guests to play one another's games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam Cloud. It's all enabled by authorizing shared computers and users.

 

 

Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/

DS Article: http://www.digitalstormonline.com/unlocked/steam-family-sharing-share-your-steam-library-with-friends-and-family-idnum183/

[ERSCreeper]

Nice

[CoolBeans]

Yay, now peseants can't say we can't share games on PC

[TopWargamer]

WHAT? THAT'S AWESOME!

 

10 people, 5 can use my Steam library at a time. That's more people than I thought.

 

[Misanthrope]

Is not that nice unless you have multiple accounts with games spread across them because:

 

CAN TWO USERS SHARE A LIBRARY AND BOTH PLAY AT THE SAME TIME?

No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

 

If you (like me, and I'm sure many others) have most of your games on a single account, sharing would mean that you can't play any of the games on your account while the other person is playing so it's moot.

[Misanthrope]

WHAT? THAT'S AWESOME!

 

10 people, 5 can use my Steam library at a time. That's more people than I thought.

 

 

 

Not at a time, only 1 at a time read my post. 5 can be activated but if anyone uses it it's blocked for all others.

[Whiskers]

Yay, now peseants can't say we can't share games on PC

 

I wish people would stop saying things like this. It's gotten to the point now where even if it's intended to be humorous it fails to be. Plus frankly it's boring.

 

On topic - awesome. Nice to finally have it.

[miyabwah]

I already had family sharing. But there's no difference now that it's open.

[TheTechGenius]

Is it just me,  am I the only one that thinks Steam needs to improve the service? Mainly, how many users can play a game on one Library at a time. Come on, only 1 person can use a Library at a time. Whats the point in sharing the damn game then? They should have made it at least 2 people can share a library at one time, and I would have been happy. But this just doesn't make any sense to me. I know I won't be using this service at all.

[JohnnyGrey]

Is not that nice unless you have multiple accounts with games spread across them because:

 

 

If you (like me, and I'm sure many others) have most of your games on a single account, sharing would mean that you can't play any of the games on your account while the other person is playing so it's moot.

You need to read better. The account holder (The sharer) takes priority. If you access your library, they are given a few minutes to buy the game or quit. And they can't boot you offline if you're playing. It will simply be "unavailable" to them.

But i partially realize what you're saying. Can't play together, which sucks, but after all, you paid for a single license, the fact that others can play your games at all is a pretty awesome thing.

[peanutsrevenge]

Good, but without the ability to sell my Steam purchased games, valve are still just sort of being back in my 'Epic' books!
 

[EChondo]

You need to read better. The account holder (The sharer) takes priority. If you access your library, they are given a few minutes to buy the game or quit. And they can't boot you offline if you're playing. It will simply be "unavailable" to them.

But i partially realize what you're saying. Can't play together, which sucks, but after all, you paid for a single license, the fact that others can play your games at all is a pretty awesome thing.

So then why not allow them to play the games you aren't playing?

 

I can play CS:GO while someone plays Half Life. 

[Misanthrope]

You need to read better. The account holder (The sharer) takes priority. If you access your library, they are given a few minutes to buy the game or quit. And they can't boot you offline if you're playing. It will simply be "unavailable" to them.

But i partially realize what you're saying. Can't play together, which sucks, but after all, you paid for a single license, the fact that others can play your games at all is a pretty awesome thing.

 

It still means if I let someone use games on my account they will rarely be able to use em since I would be playing something. And this is also true if you ask for someone else's game: it will be difficult to find available time to play it. You'd have to befriend people on radically different time zones and things like that.

And I agree that it's a good thing, certainly better than the alternative for digital games which is nothing (except for gog.com of course). Yet people get too exited as you can see in this thread thinking they will be able to just play lots of game from others without issue, it's not that simple.

[Misanthrope]

So then why not allow them to play the games you aren't playing?

 

I can play CS:GO while someone plays Half Life. 

 

Not possible, check what valve said this works on an account level: If I am using my library (meaning any game on my steam collection) nobody else can use it at the same time even if it's for different games. 

[Raboo]

Very Cool

[420istoday]

I understand not being able to play the same game, but why is their entire library unavailable if they are playing a game? That doesn't make much sense, if they are playing Assassin's Creed and I want to play one of their other games like Dark Souls, why can't I do that while they play a completely different game, and why aren't those other games open to all five PC's with sharing enabled?

[JohnnyGrey]

It still means if I let someone use games on my account they will rarely be able to use em since I would be playing something. And this is also true if you ask for someone else's game: it will be difficult to find available time to play it. You'd have to befriend people on radically different time zones and things like that.

And I agree that it's a good thing, certainly better than the alternative for digital games which is nothing (except for gog.com of course). Yet people get too exited as you can see in this thread thinking they will be able to just play lots of game from others without issue, it's not that simple.

 

I agree. The way I would have liked it, is if they allowed access to games simultaneously, just not the same game.

[EChondo]

Not possible, check what valve said this works on an account level: If I am using my library (meaning any game on my steam collection) nobody else can use it at the same time even if it's for different games. 

No, I was giving a suggestion and an example.

 

To me, it's my account, I pay for a license for each game, right? So why can't I play CS:GO while a friend uses my license for Half Life or Super Hexagon?

[Misanthrope]

No, I was giving a suggestion and an example.

 

 

 

Oh ok

[Beskamir]

Is not that nice unless you have multiple accounts with games spread across them because:

 

 

If you (like me, and I'm sure many others) have most of your games on a single account, sharing would mean that you can't play any of the games on your account while the other person is playing so it's moot.

Okay so in the dark days of discs how many people could legally (without creating ISOs) play from the same disk at the same time? Although I think Valve should have made it game dependent instead of library dependent...

[Misanthrope]

Okay so in the dark days of discs how many people could legally (without creating ISOs) play from the same disk at the same time?

 

A more fair comparison would be if I could lend someone my game disc (PC game or console game) or trade in for the weekend without losing access to all of my other games since I didn't lend all those other discs.

It would be fair to choose "I want to lend this game(s) out" and voluntarily loose the ability to play with that license so that someone else can use it but not simultaneously since I still have lots of other games. But to say "If they want to play a game you lend, even if it's just one, you can't be using any of your other 100 titles otherwise they won't have access" drastically reduces the usability of the feature.

[Suika]

Because of the fact that I share a library, rather than a title, it deters me from using this feature at all. If it becomes "I play X while he plays Y from the same library," I'll be happy.

[JohnnyGrey]

Because of the fact that I share a library, rather than a title, it deters me from using this feature at all. If it becomes "I play X while he plays Y from the same library," I'll be happy.

Let's be fair, when you give a game to your friend, do you give him a single disc, or your entire library?

 

Lol. "Hey friend, I'd love to give you a game, but the only way I can give it to you is if I also give you 156 other games. So just know that I thought of you."

[Scionyde]

Hey, it's better than what we had previously, so this is still a positive move in my book.

 

If I were to share my library with somebody else, my Steam account would need to be online for them to access it, correct? 

[bvh13]

Is it true that to set this up, you need to go to your friend's house (or other family member's computer) & log in with your account, to authorise their machine? You can't just pick their name from your friends list, or whatever? 

Because, that's a bit ridiculous. I mean, I can't figure out any other way to get it working, & according to a few websites I've been on, that does appear to be the case. Why do we have to do that?! Sure, it could be simpler for us to just give our friends our login details but....
1 - Why wouldn't we have just done that in the past? If that's what we have to do, we might as well just not have family sharing.
2 - I'm fairly sure it's against the Steam TOS to give out private account details.