Valve will let you share Steam Games w/Friends & Family

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Grand Master

+Frank B. Subscriber²

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Valve will let you share Steam games with friends and family on up to 10 computers

Friends and family of PC gamers are about to have their library of Steam titles jump way up in size. Steam has announced a new Family Sharing program that will allow gamers to share their entire library of titles with up to 10 additional devices, letting others they know run any game that they are aren't playing at that given moment. The feature will be available in a limited beta beginning next week ? it'll ostensibly be free, but Steam hasn't announced whether it'll ultimately require any additional payments. For now, it appears that Family Sharing will be supported by a wide catalog of titles, though Steam does note that some games, such as those that require third-party serial keys or recurring subscriptions, won't be sharable.

Source: The Verge

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Grand Master

HawkMan

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I'm sure this is not at all related or a reaction to MS' semi dropped sharing features that's been promised to make a return.

Good stuff anyway. At least two companies are looking forward.

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Grand Master

Brian M. Veteran

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I'm sure this is not at all related or a reaction to MS' semi dropped sharing features that's been promised to make a return.

Good stuff anyway. At least two companies are looking forward.

 

To be fair to them, going by normal ValveTime estimates, they would have started working on this about 10 years ago!

 

There's no way Valve could've knocked this up this quickly :P

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coresx

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Well Valve wants to be the second company to try and offer this.  Its a good idea.  Hopefully they can make it happen.

Sony tried as well on PS3 and got hammered down by publishers. You can activate a digital purchase on two devices with PSN.

 

Valve bringing the goods again but don't see it being that useful all the time which is the point, they want people to buy games.

 

Basically a try and buy in sheeps clothing, a long demo in some ways.

 

Before someone brings up Xbox One, that feature list was never going to happen. Valve's implentation is about the best you can hope for, just wait and see when Microsoft decides to reveal it was sham all along.

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Graimer

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Before someone brings up Xbox One, that feature list was never going to happen. Valve's implentation is about the best you can hope for, just wait and see when Microsoft decides to reveal it was sham all along.

Please, do share how this is the only solution that could work? MS suggested 24hour check-ins to make sure only one played a SPECIFIC GAME at the same time, which makes it equal to sharing the game disc which publishers accepts already. Today, I can share my 10 physical games to 10 different people(one to each) at the same time, why would publishers never allow the same thing for digital games?

 

Steam/Valve however will use online checks too(!) to make sure only one person can use the ENTIRE LIBRARY at the same time. This makes the feature very limited and almost useless.

 

 

But because only one device can access the library at a time, the account owner will always be given priority. Steam will kick borrowers off of if they don't wrap-up within a few minutes.

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Grand Master

trooper11

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Sony tried as well on PS3 and got hammered down by publishers. You can activate a digital purchase on two devices with PSN.

 

Valve bringing the goods again but don't see it being that useful all the time which is the point, they want people to buy games.

 

Basically a try and buy in sheeps clothing, a long demo in some ways.

 

Before someone brings up Xbox One, that feature list was never going to happen. Valve's implentation is about the best you can hope for, just wait and see when Microsoft decides to reveal it was sham all along.

 

Well since Valve has restricted it to only one game can be played at a time, that would already put it behind MS' proposed plan of allowing those friends to play any other game in your library while you were playing a game from it. 

 

Its easy for you to bash MS' plan since they never got to implement it.  Its real easy to claim you KNOW how it would have turned out considering we will never see that plan.  Whatever MS does now, its likely not what they were planning to do before. 

 

We all know that whatever Valve or MS tries to do, they have to work with game publishers to get on board with it.  Who knows, maybe the connection check every 24hrs was a way to get publishers on board with MS' sharing/trading/etc ideas.  Now that there will be no check, MS may not have leverage with the publishers and the sharing plans have to change.

 

 

Either way, MS seems committed to making it happen and Valve is making a baby step into that area.  We will see how these things roll out.

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Grand Master

Nagisan

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This sounds familiar, hmmmm....

Yes, it sounds just like the code found in the Steam files back in June.

 

I'm sure this is not at all related or a reaction to MS' semi dropped sharing features that's been promised to make a return.

Not sure if sarcasm or not, either way I doubt Valve leapt into action and added code to Steam for sharing within a month of Microsoft's announcement considering they would have had to flesh out the details and quarks before ever sending the feature list to their programming department (what I mean by that is Steam showed signs of game sharing back in June, only a month after MS announced game sharing on the Xbox One). I'd be willing to bet that Steam had plans for sharing in the works long before Microsoft ever announced it as a feature for the Xbox One. Doesn't mean Steam was the first with the idea, it simply means they came up with it on their own and didn't copy it from another company.

 

We all know that whatever Valve or MS tries to do, they have to work with game publishers to get on board with it.  Who knows, maybe the connection check every 24hrs was a way to get publishers on board with MS' sharing/trading/etc ideas.  Now that there will be no check, MS may not have leverage with the publishers and the sharing plans have to change.

Valve already has that solved though (dealing w/ publishers), by reading the FAQ this sharing system will not work with any game that requires additional access codes or subscriptions (and only those games.....all other games it will work with), and it relies on Steams virtually constant connection. If you switch Steam to offline mode you will not be able to access a friends shared library (only your own local library) so you can't cheat to system using offline mode.

 

Valve already holds a very dominant position in the PC digital distribution market, I doubt any publisher is going to not put their game on Steam strictly because of the sharing system. After all, it only allows one person at a time to access their game, why would it matter if person A or person B had paid for it if they both need to buy it to play at the same time?

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coresx

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Microsoft could implement their idea for digital titles only which is a bonus because that would get people buying those over discs for the sharing perk. This might comes as a shock but offering a choice for consumers. That is how they should have got people on board.

 

Now, they haven't done anything yet but I presume they would have if publishers were on board to begin with and I doubt they were. Microsoft need to tone it down considerably, like Valve have just annouced.

 

As you can read in the Valve FAQ, not all games are supported with this feature. Wait and see if the big publishers games are among the missing titles.

 

Publishers want you to buy games and not share them like discs. Valve's way is likely to be the only middle ground your going to get because it is strict enough so only one person has access to the library at one time. It remains to be seen what games are supported which should send a signal, clear as day as to how publishers feel about digital sharing.

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Grand Master

Showan

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Steam has recently announced that they?re about to begin the beta for the Steam Family Sharing.

The concept behind the idea is quite simple: you can share your library with your Steam friends.

 

Steam Family Sharing allows close friends and family members to play one another?s games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam cloud. It?s all enabled by authorizing a shared computer. See a family member?s installed game that you want to play? Send them a request to authorize the computer. Once authorized, the lender?s library of Steam games become available for others on the mach
ine to access, download and play.

 

 

I?ve selected a few blurbs from both Microsoft?s and Steam?s FAQ?s. Try to guess which service each blub belongs to (answers are below):

- Your friends and family, your guests and acquaintances get unlimited access to all of your games.  Anyone can play your games? regardless of whether you are logged in or their relationship to you.

- Borrowed games are only available on devices that have been authorized by the lender. Borrowed games will be unavailable on even an authorized [device] when the lender?s library is currently in use.

- No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time.

- As the lender, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when a friend is already playing one of your games, he/she will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing.

- [service] will enable new forms of access for families. Up to ten members of your family can log in and play from your shared games library on any [device]. Just like today, a family member can play your copy of [game] at a friend?s house. Only now, they will see not just [game], but all of your shared games.  You can always play your games, and any one of your family members can be playing from your shared library at a given time.

It will be interesting to not only see how the Steam Family Sharing service performs, but also how console manufacturers react. Sure, anyone can just trade discs with others, but that?s not possible when you own a digital version of a game. Many PlayStation 3 owners are currently enjoying the digital library they get from PlayStation Plus, but those games aren?t physical; they can?t be shared. Those games you picked up during the Xbox Live Marketplace sale of the summer? Can?t be shared. Did you buy a game for the Wii U on the Nintendo eShop? Then 1.) Why the heck would you do that without buying a much bigger storage space first? And 2.) You can?t share it.

If the digital marketplace for consoles continues to grow next generation, it will need a proper method of sharing games, something gamers have loudly stated they enjoy doing.

Here?s your answer key, by the way:

 

Xbox One, Steam, Steam, Steam, Xbox One

http://geekparty.com/steam-family-sharing-vs-xbox-one-family-sharing/

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Grand Master

LittleNeutrino Veteran

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could you please edit your text highlight it all and click the eraser on the editor to get rid of the horrible formatting of your post please. it would make it much easier to read.

 

also this was already posted

 

HERE

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Woelfel

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I signed up for it, see how it goes. MS will bring family sharing back. There will probably be DRM associated with the games that you want to share digitally (meaning online)...I'm guessing that you can probably do an all or a la carte model for which games you want to share (so certain games can still be played offline)

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Grand Master

Showan

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Actually this is a more realistic scenario Xbox One owners could have looked forward to:

 

http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Microsoft-Shutting-Down-GFWL-July-1st-2014-Why-People-Fear-Xbox-One-58433.html

 

Thanks 

+littleneutrino

 

CAN A MOD DELETE THIS THREAD FOR ME PLEASE!!!

 

Did not realize it was posted already...

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Grand Master

Lord Method Man

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I can already share my 64 bit Atari Jaguar games with my friends by just letting them borrow the cartridge. I don't see what the big deal is here? Is "Steam" running on the Unreal Engine?

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Grand Master

Showan

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So you're attacking the source and denying that Microsoft is shutting down GFWL.

 

Expected Neowin response.

 

Not denying that at all...

 

This was already a known fact...

 

I just don't like Mr. Usher's other post...

 

Expected Neowin Response?  My name is Showan (Show-Juan) not Neowin... I don't think you would want to be classified as such either.

 

But for the record I do love this site...  Rather I agree with people or not on the topics at hand, all are cool in my book... Including you. :D

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