I think you misunderstand family share. I’ve used it and it’s basically if you share with someone else then whenever you are online and playing any one of your games then the other person cannot play any of your other games. So you’re playing game A, well the other person can’t play game B, C, D, E, etc. from your library. That’s what anon is talking about. Steam is introducing Steam Families that is supposed to fix it but I haven’t tried it since I gave up on family sharing long before it was announced, I went back to pirating to share games.
It makes sense when considering the old concept of “Family computers”. Then familily share would allow each person in the family to have access to their own saves and achievements. Though I agree the system could use an update
Maybe, but I was thinking how back then if I wanted to borrow Spore or Oblivion from a friend then I could physically trade the discs with them. Nowadays it is more acceptable for everyone to have their own computer or gaming system assuming there aren’t financial constraints. My new problem with the new Steam Families is that it limits you to one group of 6 people and you have to wait an entire year after leaving a family to create or join a new one. Supposedly what initially made me pissed off enough to pirate again has been fixed.
It was account level, if I went offline then the other person would get a notification from steam that said something like “Hooray, X’s shared games are now available for you to play!”
I think you misunderstand family share. I’ve used it and it’s basically if you share with someone else then whenever you are online and playing any one of your games then the other person cannot play any of your other games. So you’re playing game A, well the other person can’t play game B, C, D, E, etc. from your library. That’s what anon is talking about. Steam is introducing Steam Families that is supposed to fix it but I haven’t tried it since I gave up on family sharing long before it was announced, I went back to pirating to share games.
It makes sense when considering the old concept of “Family computers”. Then familily share would allow each person in the family to have access to their own saves and achievements. Though I agree the system could use an update
Maybe, but I was thinking how back then if I wanted to borrow Spore or Oblivion from a friend then I could physically trade the discs with them. Nowadays it is more acceptable for everyone to have their own computer or gaming system assuming there aren’t financial constraints. My new problem with the new Steam Families is that it limits you to one group of 6 people and you have to wait an entire year after leaving a family to create or join a new one. Supposedly what initially made me pissed off enough to pirate again has been fixed.
It’s been a while since I used family share, but I’m fairly certain that it was done on game level, not account level. Did that change at some point?
It was account level, if I went offline then the other person would get a notification from steam that said something like “Hooray, X’s shared games are now available for you to play!”
https://lr.vern.cc/r/Steam/comments/wrwvs1/how_do_you_remove_this_notification/
If you’re talking about the new steam families beta then yes that is when it was changed to be game level not account level.