Steam Families is here
Steam Families is here
Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families is now available for all users. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just hide those games from your shared library and you will be safe
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...
This is a great feature! I can finally have both my kids play whatever game they want at the same time.
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.
Rip my shared library with gf living in NO and me in NL :(
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.
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.
Soon they will need a Family Crypt to archive the games of dead generations
This is a lot easier to manage than the old library sharing where I was always going between machines, changing accounts and sharing libraries with people with multiple desktop logins on multiple machines. Changed the family over today. I am concerned this new system will get abused by groups of independent adults like Netflix was and publishers will withdraw games or prices will increase. Just pirate please and don't ruin a good thing because for parents with dependent kids at home the cost of living is rough.
Being able to remotely manage parental controls from my login for younger kids is also awesome. It feels like it was made by an actual parent instead of a single 20 something tech bro like some other parental control systems. It is fucking abysmal that so many streaming apps make it hard to find age appropriate content or set sensible access controls. Like seriously Crunchyroll - you are owned by a fucking filthy rich media megacorp Sony and you cant provide search by age, content ratings or helpful labeling.
Oh very nice! My partner and I share libraries and it was really clunky the way it worked before.
I wish they made all games require sharing
*are
Well they already were, but the Team Families system IS here indeed.
lol I know it just hurt my brain reading “families is”
Nice & handy addition! ✌️