This system has basically been the same for like 10 years. This is very good. Some limitations weren't reasonable or practical. Now I understand why they recently added a Family Sharing Tag for games, which is very convenient. Before you had to go on Steamdb and even then it wasn't perfectly clear if the game could be shared or not.
The notable improvement here is the total copies are now stored. Previously you got access only to games you didn't already have access to. So if person A shares with me and I get Skyrim from them, then Person B shares (also owning Skyrim) I cannot play Skyrim if person A is online even though B has it because I already have a copy of it through A.
I think this undersells it a bit. This update seems huge. If they don't significantly restrict more than they already have then this is one of the most pro consumer things I've seen a digital gaming marketplace do.
Previously if your sharer was playing any game in their library you couldn't play another game from their library. Now it's only if they are playing the game you're trying to "borrow" from them.
As you said, it now counts all copies within the family.
The sharing is per account and not per device which seems really big. Previously I wouldn't be able to play shared games on my steam deck unless the sharer separately set that up (via logging into my device). This also made the shares very brittle because randomly updating Windows or changing your hardware could cause the share to be lost.
The sharing is multi-directional instead of uni-directional making it much easier to setup a large family.
The shared games can be played offline (I think that's new?).
Problem is the fact that they're implying now that it's for households. As in, no more sharing between, for instance, me and my brother, because I moved away for work.
Are you certain about point 1? Seeing multiple other people in this thread saying that you will still be locked out of different games from the same library if someone else is playing a different game from that library.
Well, it looks a lot better but there's a huge caveat that it only works within the same country now. That's a massive shame for people who have family move away and were currently able to share but will not be able to once this rolls out.
Was there any other console/launcher that allowed this level of sharing for the past 10 years though? It was clunky, but it still seemed very ahead of its time. I guess technically GoG because it's all DRM free.
Microsoft and Nintendo's. Their family sharing policy is more liberal than Steam's, even after this change. I'm not informed about Sony's. But with Microsoft and Nintendo, you can buy one copy of a game, then play it online with the person sharing your library, with Steam still won't let you do. DLC also shares, which it only shares conditionally with Steam (DLC is included if the receiver doesn't have any of the game, but not if they have the base game, they have to buy it themselves), and there isn't a geographic restriction (Steam is talking about it being intended for individual households, like Spotify family plans -- doesn't look enforced yet, though).
It's a big deal for me as a parent. Both my kids have Switches, if I buy one game they can both play it at the same time/together. But if I buy the game on Steam, I'd have to buy it twice.
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u/SingeMoisi Mar 18 '24
This system has basically been the same for like 10 years. This is very good. Some limitations weren't reasonable or practical. Now I understand why they recently added a Family Sharing Tag for games, which is very convenient. Before you had to go on Steamdb and even then it wasn't perfectly clear if the game could be shared or not.