Sad but understandable
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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The new family sharing is great. I am sad I cannot share it with family who lives 30 km away but in a different steam economic zone. I think on the whole it's a net positive though
What are the positives to the new one? I have family in a different country so this is a big loss for me.
If you own games ABC, and you share them with family. Each one of your family members could be running game a, and then game b, and game c at the same time! The only limitation is multiple people can't play the same game at the same time. So your entire library is available for concurrent usage.
The old classic version of steam sharing simply meant that only one person could play at a time, regardless of which game they were playing
And to play two copies of the same game at the same time, any 2 members of the family could own it. So my brother and I can each buy a game, and then my mom and sister could play it while we are at work. My sister can't work, so she has a lot of time to fill but can't afford to buy games. We do have 5 copies of Stardew Valley, though, as that is a game for the whole family.
There was already a bunch of games my brother and I both owned before steam family was an option. But now games I'm only tangentially interested in after he played them or vice versa are much more of an option to quickly play through to see if I like it too. Before, it just wouldn't have been worth buying it to find out. And it's a bonus for the devs too if I do end up liking it, because then I am more likely to buy their next game so I can play it at the same time as my brother.
Gaming is inherently social. Even when we play single-player games, I'm sure most of us have a friend or sibling we talk to about them as we play.
Admittedly, that's pretty good... but useless to families that live far from each. It's difficult for those families to not feel robbed while everyone else now gets an even better experience.
Use routers that support site-to-site VPNs, that way any additional households connect to the main household, and everyone’s IP address looks like it’s coming from the same, singular household.
Note that I have no idea how the Steam client is verifying location. If they send out ARP probes and cut access if they can’t detect the other device running Steam on the same layer 2 network this probably won’t work. People use segmented subnets and vlans in their home networks though, so i would assume that it’s just a public IP thing.
Perhaps my experience is atypical but with the old system I'd have to sign in and reset everything every few months, so that doesn't really seem very different for me at least. But then again I dont have much if a remote setup anymore.
The first time I opened an invite steam said I couldn't join, but on a whim I opened it a week later and it worked. I still live in a different city so don't know what happened.
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I didn’t realize the new Steam family sharing was so detrimental to close ones away from each other. Their Guide & FAQ is clear with their intentions:
While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.
To that end, we expect the requirements for participating in a Steam Family to change over time as we monitor its usage and add requirements to keep usage in line with this intent.
Last line is pretty brutal. Apparently even family members living in the same country & different household might be in for a surprise eventually. That’s really saddening because at first glance this overhaul sounded amazing considering a single game was locked by play instead of the whole library.
Completely anecdotal but I was able to add my brother-in-law to my Steam family without any problem and he lives about 125km from me.
The requirement is absolutely something more arcane than "same household" and Valve are keeping quiet on the actual specifics. It's possible that the fact that I've been there multiple times and have logged into Steam on their wifi in the past was enough to confirm that this is a place with close relation to me. Who knows though.
It's just like all the steaming services. They'll look the other way for a time, but then crack down whenever it makes the most financial sense.
As long as we support Epic then we can avoid Steam’s enshittification
The idea is that it makes it so you don't have to mess with save data when you can access your big brother's pc
Tip: You can share your library with someone by giving them your account sign in information, having them download what they want to play, and then having them turn their device's internet off. This will allow you to continue using your account as normal, and your friend will be able to play the games they downloaded at any time as long as steam is not allowed to connect to the internet. If it is connected, they can play the games as long as you are not playing something on a different device.
*Only share your account info with someone you absolutely trust. It's always a risk to share credentials but use your best judgement.
"*Only share your account info with someone you absolutely trust. It's always a risk to share credentials but use your best judgement."
As someone who is estranged from my blood family, it's interesting to me how this category of people who I would feel comfortable sharing my credentials with maps pretty well onto who I would consider to be my found family
There needs to be some kind of gold buried somewhere in this new version otherwise I can only see it as another step on the enshittification carousel for an app that has slowly been getting worse over the years.
Nah, the new family sharing is way better. With the new vetsion, I can play games from my wife's library even if she is playing a different steam game at the same time.
For international family it sucks ass.
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