Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families is now available for all users. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play. Create a Steam Family To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.
This was previously available as a opt in beta, but is now available for everyone.
The “same game at the same time” part is a licensing issue. It won’t ever be “solved” because it would get Steam into legal trouble to do so, just like the Internet Archive recently FAFO’ed. In order for two people to play the same game at the same time, you need to own two licenses for said game.
But it does solve the issue of multiple people using the same library at the same time. Now your family members don’t get booted off of Skyrim just because you launched Persona. It basically combines your libraries, so any of you can choose any of the listed games to play at any time. Just like having a physical shelf full of CD cases.
Yup.
The previous family share was gathering your library of games with the “console” in a single box and giving that entire to your friend. If you want to play anything, you need the box back.
Steam Families is now a common bookshelf, grab a game if it’s there and play.
Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don’t get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.
Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don’t get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.
AFAIK, this is also a licensing issue. When Steam was launching, game publishers were concerned that people would simply share an account. So part of Steam’s licensing agreement is that the same account can’t have games (even different games) running on two machines at the same time. It’s specifically to prevent account sharing, because people would just share an account with their friends; Booting them out of their game every time their buddy boots something up is a pretty effective countermeasure.
The “same game at the same time” part is a licensing issue. It won’t ever be “solved” because it would get Steam into legal trouble to do so, just like the Internet Archive recently FAFO’ed. In order for two people to play the same game at the same time, you need to own two licenses for said game.
But it does solve the issue of multiple people using the same library at the same time. Now your family members don’t get booted off of Skyrim just because you launched Persona. It basically combines your libraries, so any of you can choose any of the listed games to play at any time. Just like having a physical shelf full of CD cases.
Yup.
The previous family share was gathering your library of games with the “console” in a single box and giving that entire to your friend. If you want to play anything, you need the box back.
Steam Families is now a common bookshelf, grab a game if it’s there and play.
Now we just need a way to use that shelf with the same account so I don’t get booted from my steam deck games just because I left something running on my PC and vice versa.
AFAIK, this is also a licensing issue. When Steam was launching, game publishers were concerned that people would simply share an account. So part of Steam’s licensing agreement is that the same account can’t have games (even different games) running on two machines at the same time. It’s specifically to prevent account sharing, because people would just share an account with their friends; Booting them out of their game every time their buddy boots something up is a pretty effective countermeasure.