Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.
Steam News | Steam Beta Client news
Useful tools:
SteamDB
SteamCharts
Issue tracker for Linux version of Steam
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
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.
Imagine moving to a new place and being banned because the last person who lived there cheated in the specific game you play lol.
Ip address isn't tied to the house, but the subscriber.
But most ISP don't have static Ip for private customers, so you experience just suddenly being banned because you received an Ip address someone got banned.
I tried to sign up for a Facebook account (hate it, but market place seemed like my only option for something I was after) and had my account automatically banned on creation. Twice. They demanded photos of my face, which I begrudgingly gave them, and still never approved my account.
I signed up for a new one with the exact same information from my mobile data plan instead and it worked fine, and I never got banned
Very handy. Been using it with my daughter and loves the amount of games she can choose from.
This is a great feature! I can finally have both my kids play whatever game they want at the same time.
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...
The family beta had weird issues on Linux (Gnome/Wayland) until recently too so I'm glad to see this getting a full release.
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.
It is not different from how the previous shared libraries worked. I guess it's there to stop cheaters from buying a single copy of the game and sharing it with throwaway accounts.
I guess it's to prevent creating family members for the purpose of cheating
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.
This is indeed the appropriate reaction to being banned on counter strike. Joke aside you could just lock the entire functionality of adding an account to your family if someone got caught cheating though.
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.
when you play a game that multiple people have, you can choose which copy is being used. The owner of that copy and the one playing get banned
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.
I know that this is supposed to be a family, but it’s a surprised dog face to me.
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
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.
Soon they will need a Family Crypt to archive the games of dead generations
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.
Oh very nice! My partner and I share libraries and it was really clunky the way it worked before.
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:
I cannot invite my gf to the Families, while we could do Library share before just fine.
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.