Because lots of people abuse Family sharing by playing games from their "friends" from the other end of the world or one of those shady Family sharing groups that steal your account. Hope the feature gets shuts down for good because it's obviously not working. If people want to play games who belong to one of the family members they should just log in to that Steam account.
See the most voted answer in this thread
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It is the only thing on Steam that still tries to combat the "one payment, one computer" approach of games. If you want to play some game on Origin or somewhere else with your sibling/whatever who is sitting two meters from you in the same household, you need to pay twice for the same game. This is ridiculous. And nowadays not even buying the disk copy can circumvent that.
(And even consoles are doing this with less and less games offering couch co-op and doing network co-op only, forcing all participants to buy the game separately.)
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Hang on. Family sharing even lets you play coop / multiplayer with a single copy of the game ? I thought you can only use family sharing while the original owner of the account doesn't use it. But I guess that can be circumvented by offline mode ?
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Sadly, it doesn't. Still, the requirement to buy a game for every member of the family when it used to be enough to have the CD and you could install it to any computer is just bad. One of the very few good things about Steam is this regard.
(Granted, GOG naturally does it a lot better, but it is essentially hard-coded into their central approach of digital distribution as a side effect.)
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I'm not happy about the decline of LAN multiplayer and hotseat mode (where it's possible) neither but to be honest when I play a great coop game like Borderlands 2 with my friends I can fully understand why I need 2 copies for that (unless I don't mind playing splitscreen on a single monitor). Not sure why it should be different when I'm playing with my imaginary little brother.
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Actually the Xbox has family share.You just make one console your home and then log in with your other account and you have access to that games.Though it should be obvious I will say it just to be clear it is for Digital only that should go without saying but eh.
I still do not like digital but at least this is something to help ease the burden.Steam family share still only allows people access to some games and only while one account being logged in at a time.There really is no point of family sharing in a household due to that in most cases.
Yeah it is limited to one console as home and so many in one year but still leaps ahead of any options on the PC.
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I wonder if the abuse really is as rampant as you claim. Shutting it down outright and inconveniencing legitimate users seems like a heavy handed approach, though. It would be a shame too, as I think the feature is a great addition and a pretty cool option for families sharing the same PC or multiple PCs in the same home (even though I don't currently use it myself). I wouldn't want to hand over the reins to my account to a younger relative/child and give them full privileges and access to my inventory, etc. just to be able to let them play some games I have on there.
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I'm not entirely sure how big the problem really is but I think the poll in guygardner's thread says a lot.
The thing you said about not wanting to entrust your Steam account to younger family members is a good point but that probably could be solved by some sort of limited access mode.
Or if Steam want to keep family sharing here are a few thoughts to make it viable: I know providing I.D. is out of the question.
- Limit the number of family members with which you can share games and make family membership permanent.
- Put IP restictions on Family sharing. Most families live on the same continent afterall. But people would probably find a way to weazel around that using VPN.
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Agreed. I looked at the poll and found there was no option I would want to vote for, none of them do the reality of the situation justice.
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+1 that poll doesn't make much sense when it comes to providing options.
Clearly a one-side take on it.
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There already is a limit to how many people you can share with. You can authorise 10 computers and 5 accounts.
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That's good to know. Are those accounts linked permanently or can you just change them whenever you feel like it ?
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You can change, I suppose. I could remove my boyfriend's computer/account from my family sharing if I wanted.
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I see. If you can family share with an unlimited number of accounts by removing and adding new ones that's problematic.
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Though, I don't see the point of linking computers/accounts forever. Computers break, and people undo friendships.
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people undo friendships
Yes they do but family is family. That's why I said in a different post that girlfriend / boyfriend is the one exception where I understand considering a non-family member family for Family sharing purposes.
Considering your friends as family is just rhetoric and extremely convient when it comes to family sharing.
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Family members also undo friendships. You don't necessarily get along with your family forever.
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You can't give people access remotely. You have to log in to the account on the computer you want to share it on, and on that computer allow family sharing then have the other person log in on that computer and activate it. So it's Account plus Computer. I can't share with someone without logging in on their computer, and someone else logging into that computer can't use it unless I authorize their account as well. It's already pretty hard to abuse given that you need either physical access or trust the person enough to give them your password and confirmation code to let them do it remotely.
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That's why I said it's dumb. So much work. Abusers can just pirate. The measure will mostly prejudice honest people. And expecting to sell more because of it is just laughable.
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Yes I agree with you, just explaining how it works to Sundance in case they didn't know.
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Thanks for filling in the blanks. I was aware that it requires you to share you credentials, that's why I mentioned Family Sharing groups on Steam that steal your account but I wasn't completely clear on the details.
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It's already pretty hard to abuse given that you need either physical access or trust the person enough to give them your password and confirmation code to let them do it remotely.
Except that people already regularly use Remote Desktop, Teamviewer, and similar programs to circumvent the need to give out the password directly or be physically present.
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Fair enough, I'm only familiar with sharing with my brother and how annoying that was. I hadn't considered remote tools of that sort since I'm loathe to use them even for legit purposes. The restriction on number of accounts and being unable to use it when the other person does make it pretty inconvenient anyway, though I suppose those who really want to abuse it always find a way.
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Those tools exist to make our lives easier more than to cheat reality. They don't change the fact that setting family sharing configuration still requires more than one computer and is way harder than just pirating
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I fail to see how that is problematic.
If I can get my friends hooked on the games I like by sharing my library with them for a limited amount of time, I'll gladly do it.
If I can get my friends to by games they would never even have considered before, just because I shared the games with them, everybody wins. I don't see the problem with that.
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And if your friends buy the games themselves after a reasonable trial period if they like them that's ok but I've seen lots of people with several hundred hours playtime and (almost) all achievements for games they don't have in their library.
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And by being able to change which accounts I'm sharing with, I can decide when to terminate such a trial period. Something that would not be possible if the accounts were linked permanently.
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But don't you have to grant them access by email every single time they want to start a game from your library anyway even if their accounts are already linked ? But removing accounts isn't really the problem I was referring to. Maybe some sort of cooldown how many new accounts can be linked would be better.
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I have no clue, as I have never actually used the feature, but I assume not. I think family sharing has the right to stay, and see it as a preventive measure against pirating.
Also: Not allowing family sharing might be seen as illegal. I think we (my country) have laws that states the rights to share books, movies, games etc. with friends and family.
A cooldown period sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
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You can deauthorise at any time but to authorise you need to login to your account on the machine in question and install a game, then when another user try launches that game it will send you an authorisation request. So you either need access to the other user's computer or they need access to yours. Unless you share your account details which is a bannable offense itself.
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Then they, abusers, will just pirate everything they played in Share mode, multiplayer games aren't supported in either way although there are pirate servers for some of them.
While the real or legit family share users will have to buy the games twice so it's just another one source of money for Valve.
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Fair point. But if I don't like it I'll just steal it can be applied to a lot of topics. Just look at Denuvo and how people use it as an excuse to pirate games.
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Well some friends of mine still abuse the system although they use the same account. Basically they have an account where they buy all the AAA Single Player Games and then they all log into that account download the game and then play it :b
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I thought there was a really good reason (= aka. abusers were really taking a real huge advantage about it).
Abusers could just download it from torrent for free. It's much easier than setting all the configuration of family sharing, which is complex, requires that you know each other's login and password and doesn't even let two people play the same game at the same time (thus, not being possible to play multiplayer).
In short, if that's the reason, abusers are really being dumb enough to take the hardest path.
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Fair point. But if I don't like it I'll just steal it can be applied to a lot of topics. Just look at Denuvo and how people use it as an excuse to pirate games.
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Don't know what Denuvo is. But it's really hard to abuse family sharing. So hard that I think there are more people who really use it properly than abusers. Such abusers are being really dumb. I'm assuming most of the users (aka. the honest ones) are being prejudiced with that.
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It's a form of DRM which apparently is so intrusive lots of people boycott it and either decide to wait until it gets removed or just steal the games.
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Hmm... I suppose people will always find an excuse to pirate everything. Companies need to be prepared for that, creating new ways to bring legal ways to attract their customers instead of making mistakes like that that will help people to feel inclined to pirate stuff
Alternatively, they could just take advantage of piracy to sell more other products while officially they pretend to be against piracy, as Sony did with PS2, LOL
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How is it abuse? If I buy something with my hard earned cash, it is now mine. If I choose to let somebody borrow it then that is MY choice. Abuse indeed.
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You didn't purchase the game, you purchased a licence to use it but I don't want to get into technicalities. The feature is called Family sharing for a reason. If you want to do it with your friends get a console and buy retail.
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Well, then you are not abusing family sharing but using it the intended way. I should have probably made it more clear that's not what I mean by abuse.
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what if my family member lives in another country? I can still share right?
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Are you asking about Valves stance on it or what my personal moral compass says ? Regardless, the answer is yes.
I don't have a problem with Family sharing being used with Family members regardless where they live. That's how the feature is intended.
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How could you even say that ? My mother is a saint!
Just kidding. I didn't read this message before it got deleted.
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I think family concept is relative. I may have a group of friends which are family for me. There's that saying "friends are the family you choose". It's true, indeed. Beside that, most of my family don't play games. I don't see how they should oblige me to use that feature only with my family.
For example, I used to use family sharing with my boyfriend. He was family enough for me and vice versa.
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Yep and I choose when I am at work and not on my computer and don't play on steam for my friend's child to use my license and play that game that he likes because I did pay for that service SO for that specific license or copy I can do what I want with it .
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I let my boyfriend, who lives in the same house as me, play my games in family sharing. But no way i'd let him play on MY account. That overwrites the steam cloud for my games, that violates my playtime, my achievements and everything. I'm very possesive when it comes to my accounts, I want the data there to absolutely represent ME.
We actually did pay for some games twice, like the witcher 3, skyrim etc. but we're both young and couldn't afford buying every game twice on the long run. I think family sharing is great and should be kept, because tbh, we always shared games in our family. In earlier days we just let the disks roam through the household.
They COULD limit it to one country. That would of course be a disadvantage to people who live further away from their families, but it's better than just shutting it down all-together.
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The thing about playtime and achievements is a good point. I think you got that anyway but just to clarify that's not what I ment with abuse. That's using family sharing the intented way and while boyfriend / girlfriend might not technically be family it's the one exception where I understand considering a non-family member family for Family sharing purposes.
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my mum calls him her third child, mums are always right! :D
I was also not hinting at the abuse part of your text directly, I just meant while it definitely CAN be abused, it is still a usefull feature that I would definitely miss if it was taken out, because we use it a lot and we would miss out on a lot without it.
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You didn't actually know much about how family sharing works when answering to this topic did you?
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I did know that you have to share your steam credentials to do it. That the person who owns and shares it can't play while the other person does and that you can share your libary with an unlimited amount of people (I was just verifying that point) from all around the world. The only thing I found out new about it in this thread is the exact authorisation process.
I'm not sure how that information is relevant for what I said in my initial statement.
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Well, then it looks like you don't understand how it works even now. You don't have to "share" your credentials, in fact you're not even allowed to do so as someone else already pointed out in this thread.
Anyway, I was just surprised about your, to use an on topic term, overwhelmingly negative stance regarding family sharing.
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Ok, let me rephrase that: You have to share your credentials or use remote control software like Remote Desktop or Teamviewer to abuse family share with random people or online "friends" from around the globe. You did read everything and understand that I don't have a problem with family sharing per se but with Family share abuse, right ?
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So you're saying that your initial post is just you stating that you are against abuse? I find it a bit of an odd statement on a random topic but sure. I probably misread the part where you said that you hope the feature get shut down. I will concede that you may be well informed on the topic, it just looked to me that you weren't, hence my question.
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Well, OP asked why (in her perception) more and more games are being excluded from Family sharing and my guess was that the feature is too prone to abuse. So in my opinion my reply was on topic.
But I have to admit that my solution to shut it down completely would unreasonably inconvience users who legitimately share their libary with their relatives and or boyfriend / girlfriend. And my main takeaway from this thread is that more people appear to be using Family share legitimately than I would have assumed. On the other hand people who do abuse it are less likely to come forward about it but shutting it down completely to put an end to this would still be a hardliner solution.
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I'm sure it's possible to abuse, as almost everything is, but the way its supposed to work seem almost ridiculously restrictive to me. It's actually almost like they designed the system for this abuse as it's most useful for people in different timezones :P
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Actually that's incorrect. The game owner has priority over his owned games so if another user is playing one of your games and you launch anything in your account he/she gets an alert that he/she has a short time to save their progress and exit or they're kicked out automatically.
And it's not unlimited, you can only link with 5 other accounts and 10 different machines(they're both needed, for example me and my brother have connected my pc at my house with his pc at our parents' place while my laptop and his pc at his house aren't connected. So we can only access each other's libraries when I'm at my house and he is at our parents')
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I've been told in this very thread that there are no restrictions about disconnecting accounts and connecting new ones which basicallly makes it unlimited unless I'm missing something.
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Ah, that's how you meant it. Yeah, you can link and unlink as much as you want but afaik once disconnected the DRM kicks in and prohibits the games from launching. Not entirely sure about this though
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but afaik once disconnected the DRM kicks in and prohibits the games from launching.
Yeah, that's what I assumed but honestly being able to share your library with 5 random people from all around the globe at the same time doesn't really make it less prone to abuse in my opinion.
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It doesn't matter how many people you share it with, the point is it can only be used by just 1 person at any given time. If anyone is using anything from your library noone else can launch anything unless it's the library owner in which case the person using it before gets kicked off.
it's practically no different than sharing your account credentials without the security risk and with you having priority over the account
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But then the stats would be shared, for example, achievements, and I don't want my family getting my achievements for me. I think they could restrict it to the same country or city.
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The thing about falsifying achievement progress and playtime is something I did not initially consider but Landyra already brought it to my attention. That's something I can entirely understand. I don't like to falsify my stats neither that's why I don't idle games I intend to play even if it might take a while until I get around to playing them.
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Nah, that's been a thing ever since Steam rolled out the feature. Like, virtually all of the better known Ubisoft titles had the tag applied retroactively as soon as it dropped, for instance. It's actually understandable why it's implemented in cases like F2P MMORPGs and the like, though.
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It's applied to most of the Ubisoft games as they require a third party DRM, in this case Uplay. Oddly though Far Cry 4 can be Family Shared.
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Oddly though Far Cry 4 can be Family Shared.
Maybe because they have that Keys to Kyrat feature anyway that allows you to play coop (under certain restrictions) with people who don't own the game.
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SteamGifts acting up and posting the same message twice.
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Family Sharing is the most useless feature anyway. My brother wants to play a game from my account? Sounds great, but... No wait, I'm playing a game so... He's not allowed too, even if it's a different game then I'm playing... So he can only play something if I'm not playing something? What's the point of family sharing at that rate, I'll just let him on my actual account if I'm not using it.
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Really? I can't remember so well, but when I shared games with my ex-boyfriend, we could play different games at the same time
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Yah, me and my brother live together, and he has a tendency he gets bored of games real quick, so I thought the family sharing would help out since I have like 100+ games he doesn't have. Set it up, he got on and started playing a game, I went on my account and started playing a different game, and he got a popup telling him the game would shut down in like 5 minutes I think it was. Tested with a few different games, same problem, so I looked it up and... It appears only 1 account can play games from the library at a time. The only way to circumvent it is for me to set to offline mode, but then I can't chat with friends while gaming so yah... It's a horrible feature imo.
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:0 so that could work? if me(main account) set it to offline mode, we could both play our own respective games?
not offline mode as in full no-network access or just going "offline" in steam friends options
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You have to go full offline mode.
Steam > Go Offline
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You can play his games whilst he plays yours but you were never both able to play different games from the same library.
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I already mentioned that on a earlier comment: I'm letting my boyfriend play my games in family share. I'm glad to show him the games I love and see him progress there. He can play when I'm at work or streaming or busy otherwise. But I would NEVER let him play on my account. That would overwrite the data for many of my steam cloud games, and also it would add playtime on my account that I didn't actually do. Let alone he would get achievements on my account that I probably haven't achieved myself and probably didn't want to achieve in the first place. That would estrange my own account from me.
Also you can play the same time! If I play in offline mode for example, or if I just log out for a second every few minutes :P
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Yah, I noted in a later response that you can get passed it by playing in offline mode, but... Then I can't talk to friends through steam while gaming, and sometimes I like to chat. That being said, I gave up achievement hunting long ago, and pretty much all my games support multiple saves, so I'm not too concerned. Ofc, I trust my brother more then I would someone I'm dating...
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Yeah, i understand the part with offline mode not being able to talk to people. For me, as I work for most of the day, he can just access my games online.
And I trust him far more than my sister, given that we've been dating for years and live in the same house :P It's not about trust though. I'd trust both of them with my account. I just don't want them to change anything on it, so they couldn't play on it xD
I guess it just really depends on the person. While I don't identify as achievement-hunter, I want the achievements on my account to be achieved by me. Same for my playtime.
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As I already said above, account sharing is against Steam's ToS. So probably in order to comply with their own rules, they had to implement this feature.
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If you play SP-Games: go offline play the games and your brother can still play games from your libary
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It looks like Microsoft's initial purpose of not letting games to be borrowed on XBOX ONE. So clever. It will surely make you sell more NOT
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Removing family sharing option from games just will make people pirate more instead of making them buy more
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Okay. But it doesn't lose them profit while family sharing does.
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People share physical copies of games all the time. They also re-sell them to other people when they don't want to play anymore. Companies are not making profit from it and I don't see why they should. It's like having to pay to Subway again if you decide to give/share your sandwich to/with your boyfriend.
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I don't think that's an apt anology, you and your bf don't have to split the experience of the game, you both get the full.
I understand companies not wanting others to play their product when they didn't pay for it. It's more of a principle thing than profit thing I think.
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Selling and giving are very different, but they share one same characteristic: once you transfer possession, it's another person's possession, so they can use as they please (of course, within the law). If you spent money to have possession of something, it is even more true. You do have rights over something you gave money for. Companies are not making you any favour: they produce something you want, and you give something they want (money). Having done so, the deal is fair and over.
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You don't know what you are talking about.
The Xbox One's sharing system was going to be like Steam's family sharing, but people misunderstood it...
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Indeed, I don't know the world of games very well. But it was so lame that they removed it. So obviously it was not an intelligent feature
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PIty if they do away with that feature.
I use it legitimately with one family member.
And if Dev / Valve believe that because they do away with the feature that this will equal to me buying another copy of a triple A game... it makes me laugh.
I think most sensible people will be very hesitant to share steam password and username with people from around the world, especially if they have accumulated quite a decent amount of games.
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Yeah, it's just dumb from both parts. It's dumb to think you could make more sellings by not letting people share their games, and it's dumb to abuse a so complex system, while you have much easier options if you want to abuse, like piracy.
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I agree the feature is broken. It would work if they get rig of the stupid "block your whole library if the other person is playing" limitation and think of other anti abuse mesures. Like puting a limit to the number of shared accounts (lets say 2 at the same time and only 1 game per user) and the time you can share a game with them (maybe once per month). They can even ban sharing the same game with anyone for a longer period if you share it with that person frequently, there are a lot of things that could be done.
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I don't use the feature since I don't have anyone to share my library with but that's just publishers being greedy.
And if they go down that route I see the industry having some serious legal problems to circumvent, at least in the EU. There have already been some rulings stating that region locking inside the EU is illegal, that digital licences are products and can be resold, and granting the right to refund... do they really want to piss people off so that they complain to the European Commission and gain the right to temporarily lend digital products as they would physical ones?
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that digital licences are products and can be resold
I think that decision was revised in a following lawsuit. Or Valve simply doesn't give a damn. At least I'm from the EU and I still can't sell / gift games from my library.
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As of last year the ruling was delayed. I haven't followed it since, to be honest, but I assume it is still in a limbo. Still, the direction it was taking was positive for consumers.
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I see. I guess we'll just have to wait then and see where it's going. I doubt I would use it very much but it would be still nice to have it as an option.
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Yeah, me neither. I'm somewhat of a collector with way too many games for it to matter. Still, more options are good, and I'd also like to leave my library legally to my kids someday :)
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not even that... in my country some kind of ebay-like-site offers ACCESS to steam games to be played only in OFFLINE mode...
they just sell family sharing codes...
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DAmnn ... this about pirating and now abuse of family share is getting old, this is just PR in my VIEW, I work for a global company and know how image works but some buyers really want to justify their not so good pre-order buys with the justification because you don't pre-oreder and don't buy dlc's and 90% pirate the game is sub-par or broken or doesn't work :V , thank god I have MD in CS and know how this works :V.
I don't buy full price ,don't pre-order and pirate to see if the game is working is good etc or has a correct price for me in that moment :D and still have 1000+ game on Steam , gog , uplay and origin :D
But every one with his view , Have a good day sirs :D
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I just can't quite understand your English, so I couldn't get it well. But whatever. Have a good day either
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If you say so , my English is quite fine . If you want to understand me , quote the parts that you didn't understand and I will change them with more appropriate words ... have a good day !
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I wish all games actually where clear on if family sharing worked on them or not.Anyone that uses third party application to access is a no go for obvious reasons.The rest of the games are unclear and done by trial and error.I wish all games clearly stated that.If steam is going to tout it as a feature they should at least require it to be displayed.
Then again Valve is more interested in counting money then to make sure the store front properly displays the features of the game and the proper OS and DRM for that matter.
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Why has that message been so frequent lately on store? Or is it not recent? I just noticed that a few days ago
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