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Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game.
This is a great improvement to this feature. It’s refreshing when these type of convenience features are considered and implemented.
Ubisoft and EA already opted out lmao
And no one was surprised
Just wished it worked across countries/steam store regions
I’m really glad to see this. My husband and I game together a lot so we will still buy individual copies of a lot of games. Theres some games though that I’d like to try but never will because I won’t buy them, and his library is basically never available when I want it to be. Happy that we can now share some of those really weird one off games!
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game
Hm… so if you don’t trust your kids to not do dumb things in games you also play then don’t share them
As much as i don’t really like this there would have been a loophole where you use fake temporary family members to continue cheating.
Back in the day some games also banned your homes external ip address which would have a similar effect.
Imagine moving to a new place and being banned because the last person who lived there cheated in the specific game you play lol.
Ip address isn’t tied to the house, but the subscriber.
But most ISP don’t have static Ip for private customers, so you experience just suddenly being banned because you received an Ip address someone got banned.
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cheating
Dumb things
These are not the same thing.
Very handy. Been using it with my daughter and loves the amount of games she can choose from.
Finally! Now I can switch back to the “normal” Steam Beta build for other experimental features, Steam Family was on a separate beta build which didn’t allow me to try other things…
The family beta had weird issues on Linux (Gnome/Wayland) until recently too so I’m glad to see this getting a full release.
I’ve been on it for a while (on Garuda, no Gnome) and it’s been stable. I don’t recall any issues. Maybe I just got lucky.
It’s fixed now. But flatpak steam on gnome/Wayland would display a black screen on the store when opted into the family beta for a while. Stable was unaffected.
Ah, flatpak. That might be the difference.
This is a great feature! I can finally have both my kids play whatever game they want at the same time.
You can only add family members in the same steam store region.
Unfortunately over here it seems to be doing IP-based location as I’m not able to add my brother who lives in a different part of the same town.
just have him login to your computer, then log him out, then add him as a family member, steam will see both use the same ip/computer, and bam, your good
Yeah this has been a sticking point since the beta, they never responded to the thousands of comments complaining about it. It’s pretty bullshit and makes this feature useless in many circumstances.
This bit is a bit fucked up:
What happens if my brother gets banned for cheating while playing my game?
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.
Not sure I agree, how else are they meant to prevent the ocean of “It wasn’t me, it was my brother” excuses from hackers smurfing accounts?
I’d recommend (to everyone) that if you’re unsure -or have even the slightest doubt about the person you’re going to give access to your Steam account- to politely decline and play it safe.
They should know the account it is that’s currently using it. They’re not using your account when playing your games
Bro you can just make a fake account and say it was your little brother , they literally have no idea who signed up or if they lied about account details 🙄
Unless I’ve misunderstood; that’s exactly why I asked the question in my original comment. I’ll explain my / the reasoning:
I own a game on a Steam account (A) and want to hack (and evade bans) using another Steam account (B).
I share my library/game from account (A) to account (B) then hack on account B and only account B gets banned… What’s to then stop me from making Steam account C, D, E, F… etc? Absolutely nothing. Hence the double ban.
I stress that if you do share a game / your Steam library with others you trust them explicitly.
Restrict the number of accounts that can join that family group. And/or remove the ability to share the library from the main account for repeated offenses.
Or require multiple family members accounts to have to cheat before the owner account is banned.
stop sharing your library with strangers and kick your brother’s ass when he gets you banned
It is not different from how the previous shared libraries worked. I guess it’s there to stop cheaters from buying a single copy of the game and sharing it with throwaway accounts.
That sort of behaviour should be easy to track if it happens more than once though
Being able to evade a ban once is already a problem. Now you need to ban every cheater twice to really ban them.
I guess it’s to prevent creating family members for the purpose of cheating
I think it’s a great rule. If you’re sharing your library with others, don’t be am asshole and cheat. If you do you’ll be a disappointment to them too. More social pressure to not cheat is only a positive in my opinion, but also I will never cheat and I only share my library with people I’m confident won’t cheat as well. I don’t associate with people who want to ruin other’s fun. If you do then that’s on you. It’s your choice to risk getting banned.
It also stops people from buying a game, sharing it to themselves on an alt account and using cheats. Then just spinning up a new alt account at no cost when the first one gets banned.
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Sounds like a great life lesson to be taught by a responsible adult to a 24 year old discovering cheats.
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Not sure where you’re going with this - I was implying that there are consequences for cheating, like losing access to a game library even if temporary.
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I can’t even imagine if I were a kid and made my parent lose access to a lot of games.
Well it’d be just the one game that they cheated in. That’s where you can sit the kid down and tell him that cheating has consequences. Ideally this talk would’ve happened before you share access though - I’m thinking of it as making sure the kid knows how to drive before you let them borrow the keys to your car.
Steam Families is not just used by families.
I mean, someone should get banned from cheating. I can see why this happen though, since the account playing does not own the game the account which has the game linked gets banned instead. If the account cheating has the game they are instead playing on their copy and that gets banned instead (i assume).
However the ban should be linked to the account and not the copy of the game. I do not understand why this isnt the case. Maybe because someone could just make a new account and link that to play on instead, therefor never having to buy more than one copy of the game while cheating.
Yeah, it’s most likely to prevent someone from using the family feature to get away with cheating.
As it stands now, if you get caught cheating you must create a new account and repurchase the game. So the main deterrent is the full cost of a game.
With the steam family function you could potentially create 5 new accounts per year, and simply remove them when they get caught cheating. The only deterrent would be the wait period.
So I agree with their decision. The downside is that you must trust someone before adding them to your family. If your cheating son gets you kicked off counterstrike, then just remove him from your family. They’re never too old to drop off at the fire station.
This is indeed the appropriate reaction to being banned on counter strike. Joke aside you could just lock the entire functionality of adding an account to your family if someone got caught cheating though.
I’m not sure that would be the best solution. A cheater could still get caught cheating 6 times before requiring a repurchase, and it’s still a pretty harsh penalty for someone who didn’t cheat. You keep your game, but you can no longer share your library if your family situation changes.
‘Sorry, son, you can’t play my games on your computer because daddy made a bad decision when he was 21.’
The ultimate solution is probably an online identity when playing any game. Imagine if cheating got you banned from all online games for 5 years.
My question is, when there are 5 people with 5 copies of a multiplayer game in the pool, and the 6th member without a copy gets banned, which of the other 5 members gets banned?
They send their enforcement squad to all houses involved.
when you play a game that multiple people have, you can choose which copy is being used. The owner of that copy and the one playing get banned
Thanks, that explains it. So there is a pop-up when you try to play a game from the common pool and you have to choose who you are borrowing from?
Best guess? Whichever account gave account 6 permission to play their game.
Either account 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 will be the user that gives 6 the permission to play their game, so it follows they’re the one that (I’m assuming) will get banned also. It’s a good question you raise and I’d be interested to know for sure myself.
Nobody is giving anybody permission any more than anyone else though. Account 6 creates a family and 5 accounts with a game join the family. There are now 5 copies of the game in the family pool. Account 6 can play and get banned. In this situation nobody even invited account 6 to the family.
Just hide those games from your shared library and you will be safe
This is fantastic! I was just trying to set up my kid on a computer and the old way was seeming too clunky and slow, and she wanted to do something else so we never finished it.
I mean, it’s been here for beta years and yes, it is absolutely fantastic. The one year penalty keeps me from handing it out like candy to extended family and friends (plus we all have that cousin who can’t be trusted) while I can let my wife and kids play games on my account without them kicking me out of mine.
The parental controls are good too, although I’m not using them yet since my kids are too young to really pick their games from the library themselves.
So how do I create a Steam Family? I can’t see an option to do so anywhere but I am most likely just missing it… or it hasn’t been rolled out to the UK yet
edit: found it! For anyone else who is lost like me, go to the top right and click on your use name and then Account Details. From there, Family Management is on the left and it’s obvious
I know that this is supposed to be a family, but it’s a surprised dog face to me.
I have three sons, they live in the West Coast, I live in the Midwest. I can’t join a family with them. That’s a bummer.
Why not? My Steam Family is just a group of friends spread out all across the country. Geographic distance shouldn’t be an issue.
I don’t really know how it works but according to a lot of other people here it doesn’t work unless you are in the same region. This isn’t the only person here saying they can’t use it because they don’t live near their family.
They’re doing IP location checks, and they’re doing them badly (there’s not really a way to do them well). It’s not working for me with people in the same town, and other people are reporting it’s randomly working or not working with locations in the same neighborhood.
Why can’t you?
I get a big red banner saying sorry, according to your usage patterns you are not in the same family.
Most of what I’m reading online talks about an error complaining about region, in which case you’d want to make sure you’re in the same store region.
Other main suggestion is signing into your steam account on their computer. You could probably use something like Microsoft quick assist (which should already be installed iirc) for that
Good luck, if you get a different error or run into other problems please let me know!
Hey! Thanks so much for the helpful response. I really appreciate it!
Between my wife’s enormous Steam library and Whisky/Crossover on my M2 MacBook, I’ve been playing more games than ever since the beta of this popped up. It’s actually quite impressive how many games just work - albeit with some compromises in places.
Can you share more about how you got steam to work that way? Right now I play some games through a VM with horrible performance.
If you’re using an M-series Mac, download the Windows Steam installer and Whisky. Install Steam through Whisky then simply install games through Steam as normal.
There’s a bit of a learning curve, but /r/MacGaming on Reddit is a useful resource.
There are some that simply won’t work because the hardware won’t run them (Red Dead 2 is the most disappointing one for me), but have a play and see what works.
Rip my shared library with gf living in NO and me in NL :(
Are they stopping families for sharing to other countries?
Yes - I believe same-region store setting & I cannot invite my gf to the Families, while we could do Library share before just fine.
How does this effect that?
My guess is this, which is way at the bottom of the support FAQ page (which can be found at the bottom of the posted FAQ section):
“I cannot join a Steam Family”
If you cannot join a Steam Family, it is likely for one of three reasons:
- Your account activity does not show that you are part of the same household as the existing members.
I cannot invite my gf to the Families, while we could do Library share before just fine.
Why not?
Replied in other posts, it likely is because you have to be in the same country/steam store region or something…
A lot of work but: have her VPN into your residential network and send her traffic through your ISP for a while.
5head tactics haha.
Oh very nice! My partner and I share libraries and it was really clunky the way it worked before.
