Steam Game Sharing Begins Limited Beta Soon

[roseofbattle]

Steam Game Sharing Begins Limited Beta Soon

Valve was listening when Steam users asked for a way to share games.

Valve announced their new game sharing feature, Steam Family Sharing, in a press release today. The feature allows people to share their game libraries by authorizing a shared computer and storing different users' saves to the Steam cloud.

According to Valve's FAQ for the feature [http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/], a user designated as the lender can share his or her entire Steam library -- not a specific game. When the lender wants to play a game in his or her library, the borrower has a few minutes either to buy the game he or she is playing or to stop playing while the lender is logged into Steam. The Steam library can be shared with up to 10 devices. To enable Family Sharing, the user can either locally enable sharing in the account settings or remotely respond to a user's Steam request.

The service "is designed for close friends and family members to play one another's Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud," the press release states.

However, not all games can be shared. Games with an additional third-party key cannot be shared between accounts, and regional restrictions will remain the same.

Steam users interested in the feature can join the limited beta next week by joining the Family Sharing Group [http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing/] on the Steam community. The first 1,000 people interested will be granted access to the beta.

Source: Steam [http://store.steampowered.com/news/?headlines=1&feed=steam_press]

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[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

This...wow...OK, I've always been the first person to point out when Valve does something wrong. Let me be the first person to point out that they've done something utterly brilliant. All hail Valve.

 

[Covarr]

This proves this feature can be implemented without adding a 24-hour check-in requirement. See this, Microsoft? Learn from it.

P.S. Thanks

 

[Falterfire]

Very snazzy. My younger brother will be thrilled to hear this.

The important bit of missing information is how it handles being DC'ed from the internet. You can't be kicked from simultaneous play if Steam can't get info from the internet, so I can't imagine you'll be able to play forever without an internet connection. Hopefully you'll be able to at least keep playing for a little while after the connection drops so you don't get suddenly booted because of terribad internet.

 

[Agayek]

This is pretty awesome. It's a great first step toward reclaiming property rights for digital property.

My only real complaint with it is that only one game in any given library can be in use at a time. What that means in practical terms is that I can't be playing game A I own while my buddy plays game B from my library, and I find that restriction kinda stupid. I could see the argument for making sure that both I and my buddy can't be playing the same game (essentially, "but if it was physical there'd only be one copy to use!"), but there's no reason other than catering to the DRM nuts to restrict the entire library to one game at a time. I should be able to lend my buddy whatever games I'm not playing (hell, I could see a restriction where I can't have them installed on my machine), but it shouldn't block my buddy from playing a game I'm not when I want to play something completely different.

Despite the seeming negativity of my post though, I really am rather excited to see this in action. I'm really, really hoping it will catch on and become the standard. We as a culture really need to push for more digital property rights, especially since the world is more and more headed in that direction.

 

[Aristabulus]

... You can't be kicked from simultaneous play if Steam can't get info from the internet, so I can't imagine you'll be able to play forever without an internet connection...

Not forever, as the Steam client will still want its standard ~1/month check in. (which is mighty reasonable, all in all)

 

[Rad Party God]

Say what?, Xbox One lets you "share" games?, I can't hear ya, I'm dancing out of pure joy at these news.

I said it before and I'm saying again, if you want copy Steam, then F*ING COPY STEAM!.

 

[Vigormortis]

... You can't be kicked from simultaneous play if Steam can't get info from the internet, so I can't imagine you'll be able to play forever without an internet connection...

Not forever, as the Steam client will still want its standard ~1/month check in. (which is mighty reasonable, all in all)

That's a fallacy. Once Steam is set into Offline Mode, it never needs to check in. The only occasion where it might have to is if, for one reason or another, the local account credentials are lost or corrupted.

But if that occurs, it's likely due to a system error and not Steam "deleting" the credentials.

I still don't get where people get the idea that Steam requires a check in. Some say it's once a week. I've heard others say once a month, once every three months, so on and so forth.

I can personally vouch for the lack of a check in. I have two primary PCs for gaming, one of which is setup specifically for older games. As a result, I keep it offline much of the time, only ever going online when I plan to buy a re-released older game from Steam, GoG.com, etc.

There have been times where I've had that computer disconnected from the internet for over a year. Well over. Steam never required a check in. It always booted into offline mode without issue.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

On topic: This is fantastic news. I knew Valve were working on some kind of sharing feature for months now. The code leak during one of the beta updates months ago hinted at it. Even so, I'm almost ecstatic to see it actually being realized. It's a step...nay, a leap in the right direction for the industry.

It's not quite as far as I'd like in terms of this sort of feature, but it's definitely something to "get the ball rolling".

 

[Mothhive]

Not sure how this is such a huge advance. Because it's the whole library it shares, what's the difference between "sharing" your game, and just having the sharing member come up and use your computer? I mean, it's not like you can play TF2 while your friend is playing Skyrim from your account.

Hell, they could have done this simply by changing the Terms of Use code such that your account was simply restricted to one user per time, whether that user was you or someone else.

Can someone tell me what I'm missing here?

Well, not everyone lives with their friends and family, so them using your PC isn't always an option, and any saves and achievements are associated with the account of the person using it, not the account of the person who owns it, so if the person trying out a game decides to buy it, they haven't lost any of their own progress.

Also, why are people actively trying to find problems with this? Sharing your games with limitations is better than the current situation of not being able to share them at all, so we now have something positive added without any negatives imposed to make up for it.

 

[Stevepinto3]

Sounds good but...is it implying that you can't share games while you're logged into Steam? Like even if I'm playing a different game or not playing a game at all? If so that doesn't sound like much of a step up from just having one person in offline mode, and not nearly as flexible as what Microsoft had planned.

That's not me throwing in with the "you've ruined the Xbone by taking out the DRM" crowd. Just saying I was expecting more from this. Maybe it will improve over time, it's at least a step in the right direction.

 

[Ticklefist]

Not sure how this is such a huge advance. Because it's the whole library it shares, what's the difference between "sharing" your game, and just having the sharing member come up and use your computer? I mean, it's not like you can play TF2 while your friend is playing Skyrim from your account.

Hell, they could have done this simply by changing the Terms of Use code such that your account was simply restricted to one user per time, whether that user was you or someone else.

Can someone tell me what I'm missing here?

Nothing. You're seeing it for exactly what it is. Permission to do what you've already been doing for nearly 10 years anyways.

 

[dmonkoff]

I can't see any difference between this and just lending your account, except maybe for achievements :/

 

[Ne1butme]

I've been thinking about this feature since it was announced and here's what i think is the ideal scenario for this type of sharing.

Imagine a Single PC - Multi User household. Each member of the family has their own Steam account, but they have to share the one computer. if one account purchases a game, then all of the other accounts can play it as well. Each account gets its own set of achievements.

I remember when StarCraft 2 was released and there was big uproar about multiple accounts. Each copy would allow for a single user account. So, if my wife and i each wanted a starcraft 2 account, we would have to purchase two copies of the game, even if we used the same computer. Why would we want our own accounts? Because she doesn't want to play on my ladder account and i don't want to play on hers.

What Valve has done is allow most steam games to have multiple accounts. My wife can play Portal 2, track her own achievements and other goodies like that, and i can do the same, but we don't have to buy 2 copies of the game.

Again, this only seems really beneficial on single machines with multiple users/steam accounts. I really hope that Valve will allow individual game sharing next. That way, my wife and i can each play the Witcher 3, on our own systems, but only have to purchase it once.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Baby steps are better then nothing.
With the lender having to stay completely offline instead of it being game by game basis this is no more then just lending your account, I guess the difference is you don't get instantly banned when they figure it out.

 

[UnnDunn]

This is clearly a hoax. After all, it can't be done [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.819419.19752583] because the publishers would hate it.

 

[Fractral]

Is there anything to stop the lender simply launching the game from the executable, as opposed to through steam? I know not all games work like that but last time I checked a good number- Elder Scrolls games for one- did. Seems like it could be open to exploitation.

 

[Andy Shandy]

So it's essentially what the XB1 was going to have before MS acted like a spoilt child and took it out with the DRM?

Thought it was a neat idea then, still a neat one now. Hopefully if it does well, it'll put a bit of pressure for the likes of MS to put it back in.

 

[Agayek]

Sounds good but...is it implying that you can't share games while you're logged into Steam? Like even if I'm playing a different game or not playing a game at all? If so that doesn't sound like much of a step up from just having one person in offline mode, and not nearly as flexible as what Microsoft had planned.

That's not me throwing in with the "you've ruined the Xbone by taking out the DRM" crowd. Just saying I was expecting more from this. Maybe it will improve over time, it's at least a step in the right direction.

It's not "logged in". It's "actively playing a game". Only one person can be playing a game from a single library at a time, but that's about it. If you're just logged in but not doing anything, your buddy can then play any of your games, until such time as you start playing a game. Then they get kicked off.

Is there anything to stop the lender simply launching the game from the executable, as opposed to through steam? I know not all games work like that but last time I checked a good number- Elder Scrolls games for one- did. Seems like it could be open to exploitation.

As long as the game doesn't get flagged as being open by Steam, it should theoretically work under this system. Assuming, of course, that they don't implement a system to catch something like that.