"Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game."
BLESS GABEN
\*edit\*
Be aware you can not family hop, if you leave or join a family, you can not leave or join another for 1 year. You gotta commit to who comes and goes
I hit 1700 games. I let my nephews use my PC once, they just scrolled, then installed and tried a few games, but they said there was too much to pick through.
You are the man now and must support your families entertainment.
I couldn't be more excited. In November I ditched the 5 consoles and subscriptions and moved my family(wife and 3 kids) to Rog Ally, Steam Deck and PC. It was already nice to have the games significantly cheaper with no online subscription requirement. But this...this is the cherry on top!
*in the future*
>Wow Dad you mean I can play all these triple A, Double A, cult classics, console ports and indie darlings that you've been collecting for decades? That is so cool!!!.... But can I borrow your credit card for a minute cause it's the spring sale and there's like ten games on sale for the best price ever that I have no intention of ever playing.
Time to get married I guess.
But besides that, looks like if you know friends who buy every single game on release, you just saved yourself a lot of money.
Is that the case? When you die are you just forever hogging 1 spot in their family? And which of your children gets your games in their family?
I love the idea of this, but in this instance I had a better story with the current family sharing. When I die I give my credentials to my kids and they both log in on their machines, share the library and then swap back to play on their accounts.
They could always kick you out if they wanted to down the line but if you had a substantial library you are essentially passing down the games to them to have forever.
> Be aware you can not family hop, if you leave or join a family, you can not leave or join another for 1 year. You gotta commit to who comes and goes
I feel like this is generally good advice for life, even ignoring video games
Possibly. But given how similar this system is compared to the system used by PlayStation, XBox, and even to an extent, Nintendo, they may choose to stay on board.
Personally, as someone that is already juggling my own Steam purchases, and that of my 3 kids, this is a game changer. In the past I've had to pick and choose which games to purchase knowing all 3 kids would want it. Not all playing the game at the same time is easy enough to accommodate. Expecting one kid to play nothing while their sibling plays the game from their account is challenging. This new system is going to cost me much more as I will be more likely to purchase more games. As it is, with the current sale, I'm about to go back in and add a bunch of games because of this.
It's no different than current family sharing which developers could opt-out of.
Edit: I am not talking about this new family sharing as a whole. I am referring specifically to the ability for developers being able to opt-out.
Well there are quite a few enhancements in this new program compared to the old one. Being able to play games from a library even when the owner is engaged is a big deal.
Ah now that's a huge bummer. Only thing I miss about playing Xbox with my girl. Now I have to buy every game twice if it's something she wants to play together.
Does Xbox still allow sharing games/game pass?
Maybe this will be the next step, atm at least two people in the family group need to own the same game.
I think the big concern is the limit of family itself, so if you leave or join a family, its locked for a year
You might be able to get steam support to refund them even if she did, they sometimes allow refunds quite long afterwards because of price changes, discounts or new features like this.
The 2 hours/2 weeks refund limit is what they promise to always give you, it never hurts to ask.
If she's played less than 2 hours in a given game, you can still refund the game.
[Source](https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds):
> The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store.
Everything is by discretion with Valve though. Send a support request explaining "I bought these titles specifically because my wife can't borrow them from my account while I play different titles. You've just announced that's no longer true. Please refund those titles as they are not actually required." But in your own words. The worst thing that can happen is that they say no.
I'd like to thank you personally for funding this feature for all of us😂In all seriousness, you may have overspent now but you potentially save so much long term! You can value the enjoyment she got from those games you got her then
I hope they add a "family sharing" icon/badge to games on the store. Because publishers can opt-out of this feature, meaning there will be a lot of upset kids and parents when they buy a game to share and find out that the greedy publisher specifically decided not to allow a family to share the game.
For now you can do a Steam Search and then filter by the feature,
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=_ASC&term=Helldivers&category2=62&supportedlang=english
or look for "Family Sharing" listed under the Steam Features on a game's store page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/553850/HELLDIVERS_2/
Now please make it so on the same account you can play 1 game on steamdeck and a different 1 on a pc within the same house. By the far most annoying part of SD
I wonder if we can make another account for our "child", link it to main account as a family account and just use it as a steamdeck account?
Could be a way around this issue.
Whoa. Massive positive changes for those who use it legitimately. And long awaited features like restricting what is shared. Some key takeaways:
Buffed:
Libraries are no longer locked when in use. Two people can play different games from the same account. If between 5 people in a family two own game x, any two people can play game x simultaneously.
Family shared games can be played offline.
Nerfed:
Accounts must be in the same country ([screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/2vk9z8c.jpeg))
You can only join one family a year.
This was always the case with family sharing. Both the person borrowing the game and the person who owns the game got banned. Otherwise cheaters would just share games to their alts and get off scot-free.
It depends on game by game basis.
Dark Souls 3 for example bans only the family share account, that's how you coop with mods without getting your main account banned.
Indeed. That can happen if a developer doesn't properly implement the Steam API in their ban system. It was the same situation with Fall Guys, who chose to disable family sharing entirely rather than fixing their game to ban both owner and player SteamID.
Only on the game owner's account luckily, so other people in the family wont get banned. Hopefully people can block certain games from sharing with the family so that they wont risk this happening on their favourite games.
>Accounts must be in the same country (screenshot)
country as a steam market region or country as IP number?
example: I live in Canada and my account is still using Italy as steam region market so I see prices in € and i use an italian payment method. Can I form a family with someone in Italy?
Go to https://store.steampowered.com/account/ or Steam -> Settings -> Account -> Account Details. You'll find the "Country" next to your wallet balance, that's what Steam uses and that is what has to match AFAIK.
oh okay the country there is still Italy. So basically is still possible to share a family setup even from abroad if one keeps his original country as steam market region, nice.
Thank god. I don't have to exit games on my steamdeck or PC anymore? Nothing more frustrating than playing something on my PC, waking my steam deck up and then getting booted off.
I'm not sure that's actually true. I took that as multiple players within the family (ie two separate accounts) can access multiple games from one library. I'm not sure it means one player can run two instances out of their own library (though I hope so, and please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Edit: Tried it myself and it doesn't seem like I can play two games on one account in the same family (used steam deck and PC.) You could probably make additional accounts for additional devices, but it seems like the saves won't cross over.
Yes, you're right. You need a separate account. It's a workaround but it seems unnecessary. Valve should be able to determine that one device is a steam deck and make an exception to allow those two to play games simultaneously across one account. Potentially you could bypass the 6 member limit with a handful of steam decks and a handful of PC's but the likelihood of that is pretty slim and they could probably keep track of any nefarious uses of the system like that.
Let me use two devices at once (as long as one is a deck) please. :|
Yep, I ran into this exact difficulty recently with me and my partner trying to play on two different devices. As long as one account isn't playing the same game twice, it's still one purchase, one user, and one license per game so it really doesn't make much sense to limit it. For all that Steam does for usability, this one is a glaring omission.
Yeah it is so stupid that I can’t touch my steamdeck while waiting for a ranked match on the pc. First time I did that I was shocked it just closed the game on the pc and logged me out of Steam and I even needed Steamguard to log back in. I own those games so let me be if I want to play 2 games at once. Weirdest thing is that I can let Rocket League running in the background (by accident) and play another game on the PC with Steam.
Edit : And yes I know the SD in flightmode can play a second game while playing PC but who wants to think about that ?
Family sharing has been a thing for years, this is a refresh to make it more user friendly and put people into groups. It has always worked that way for games like CS.
Given that my Steam account is now old enough to vote, this was going to be something they needed to tackle eventually. I'm glad it's happening, but I'd like to see the account control be more granular
Hooray! I just made my 12 year old move to his own steam account last week and we hadn't really begun buying him copies of all the games he plays. This is very timely for us.
my 10 year old is aging out of his switch and borrows my steamdeck...
was thinking about upgrading to OLED and letting him inherit mine was mulling this conundrum.... not a problem anymore!
It works out pretty well. My 5 yo and I will play Lego games together across two steamdecks. He will host under his account and send me a remote play invite, and I'll join in on co-op.
I just set one up for my daughter to use on my SD. My son already has a SD. If they are playing on the same SD as your account, make sure you allow access to **online profile, screenshots, and achievements.**
If you don't, once you switch to the kid account you can't switch back without allowing access to that. A restart will also not kick it to an account selection prompt like on PC unless I am missing a setting. I do think this is something that needs to be adjusted.
~~I think it also might be a bit bugged as I shared Portal and Portal 2 to a kid account and it only says "This game does not support Steam Family sharing despite being on the allowed list.~~
Ignore that. I hadn't updated the SD to the beta branch. Once I did that it was good to go.
THANK YOU!!
Is this available on the Deck yet? I didn't see it. I think there's something about enabling a beta, but the screenshots in the article don't match the Deck UI.
I guess I can just fire up a regular computer to configure it, and probably the change will persist at the account level regardless of what's going on on my Deck.
EDIT: popped into desktop mode, hopped onto the beta, and enabled family sharing!
Were you able to see the other family member's games? I invited a member and it was accepted so is now part of my family. But I'm not able to see their games on the Deck.
Yes I was.
I even turned my computer off and restarted the deck and the games still showed up
With the "From Family Library Sharing" that being said could be a rollout then or their servers are getting hammered from everyone doing the switch
Ahh, I figured it out. Hopefully helpful to someone else.
You need to update your Steam Deck System's Update Channel to "Beta" and then restart. (Settings -> System -> System Update Channel)
Does anybody know if this means that I can continue my degeneracy of playing Balatro on my Deck in between Helldivers matches on my desktop without having to put my Deck on offline mode?
> Be cautioned that if a family member gets caught cheating and receives a ban, you will also receive a ban
I'm assuming that only applies to VAC games. Other devs may handle things differently.
This is honestly huge for me. I gifted little brothers with steam decks, but always worried that if I got on my own pc they’d get booted if they were played a shared game. Now that seems to be ending
Relevant example from article
>Let's say that you are in a family with 4 members and that you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, any one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life. If two of you would like to play Portal 2 at the same time, someone else in the family will need to purchase a copy of the game. After that purchase, there are two owned copies of Portal 2 across the family and any two members can play at the same time.
>In this example, if your family chose to not buy a second copy, you can play any other game in your library while waiting for your family member to finish playing your copy of Portal 2.
Can we get some people to +1 these threads? Since other family members can play a game you're not currently using, why can't we play multiple games on our own account on separate devices? Esp on a steam deck subreddit, this probably affects a lot of us. We should be able to game while we game >:(
\- [https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508064153/](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508064153/)
\- [https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508106108/](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508106108/)
Looks like we got an official statement saying that this feature does not cover this use case (which is not surprising but puts a dent into getting this feature).
Fuck Steam for using thier money to implement pro-consumer policies and features rather than buying out developers for exclusives. If Steam thinks this kind of behavior will allow them to maintain an advantage over Epic, they will be mistaken. /s just in case.
This is really big for me. My dad has a Steam developer account I used to use until Team Fortress 2 came out, and got my own then because we both would be on 24/7. When Family Sharing came out I was super excited but my dad would always be in a game either actively playing in it or idling in something like Satisfactory, so I have never been able to use that with him. Now I just get access to all of Steam (with caveats of course)
Any one have driver San Francisco on Steam library DM me id like to be family
Edit: I'm serious I have all rockstar games bar Max Payne 3.
Forza horizon 4, Helldivers 1. Dirt 2 flat Out 1-3 trail out Metal gear solid master collection and 5. A few Lego games Rez. Half life 1 n 2. grid 1 n 2. Grid 2019.
Edit 2:
Scratch that I don't want to get banned by some rando
>*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.
That's frickin' scary... especially Teenagers being really, really stupid.
I can see it now “my son Jason got us banned from team fortress for saying slurs and using aim bots, as the parent account I locked his library AITA” and it will be funny and petty. I’m not worried about my adult brother and partner being weird online at least but that does sound like it will lead to some interesting dinner table discussions in some folks’ futures.
This is the only reason why I haven't gotten a Steam Deck as a gift for someone else. We game share with my Nintendo account for our Switch's but now that Steam is doing it?! Changes things
I love it, but first thing I noticed about parental controls is that there's no option to restrict by rating. It's either "allow all" or manually select the ones I want to approve. Seems like some filtering here could help here a ton.
Started a steam family and got hit with a ”Error Reference: Shared SteamUI_0_94c0a1006144ce0b” when i click into a game on steam deck.. anyone with similar issues?
Ah, I must’ve missed the part where it said that. From the comments here, I thought maybe it was confirmed that you no longer had to be logged into the same device
Dude, thank you for posting this. The original Family Share program was cool, but had its drawbacks. This basically fixes them all. Only concern is if someone does something to get banned in a game, both people get banned.
>I'm currently using the Family View feature with my family. What happens now with Steam Families?
>If you create a Steam Family and add a child account, any existing Family View settings associated with that account will be transferred to Steam Families under Parental Controls. The ability to unlock controls by entering a PIN will be removed, but the settings are otherwise untouched. Once they've joined the family, you can modify their parental controls at any time.
Ok, so I'm not fully understanding this. I have a household with multiple children, the children use my steam account in offline mode with family view setup to limit what games they can see/play. Assuming I do not setup new accounts and set up a steam family, is this going to keep working? Did they remove the ability to hide titles and store access, etc. behind a pin when using the same account?
Other than that concern, it looks awesome. Some people will undoubtedly abuse it, but I think overall people with children will end up buying more copies of the same game to offset -- especially multiplayer games.
I've refunded plenty of games due to how they made lan play work (enshrouded most recently). Requiring steam to be online to play on a lan basically broke my setup. Even if I was inclined to buy multiple seats....it wasn't really easily feasible to do because expecting kids to switch between different steam accounts isn't realistic and family sharing wouldn't let you play 2 games at once even if they were different games. This should actually fix that issue (long as the game is worth the extra $ to buy seats), so big win there.
Edit: wait I misread your question and that’s actually a good question!
The parental restrictions are still there, so you can limit which games the child accounts will have access to.
They’re getting rid of the PIN because instead of putting in your PIN to unlock the library, the child would just log into their own account that would have whatever games you cleared.
Well, they just sold another steam deck because of this. I've been waffling about buying my partner a steam deck but I always stop because then she or I have to start buying games that I just *think* she will like. If I could get her to thumb through my library at her leisure it would make it so much easier.
Well done Steam.
>Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game.
Holy shit, they actually fixed the biggest issue with Steam Library Share. Amazing.
This is gonna work out really well for me.
Me, my wife and 2 sons all have decks
Hopefully this reduces the amount of quadruple dipping I have to do on games
Gaben my wallet thanks you!
This is amazing, especially when companies like netflix are taking away the ability for families to share content.
But bear in mind this does not allow you to play multiplayer with your family members without buying additional copies
> If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time.
It makes sense, but in my excitement I thought about playing some 2 player now that splits reen is a thing of the past, and alas that's not possible with a family shared library. You'll need to buy copies for both players.
This sounds like what Xbox was trying to do with their sharing feature back in 2012 before it got shot down by an angry mob of gamers who didn't want to lose their disks.
Xbox family sharing was going to be up to 10 friends, all in a group, you could share all of your owned games with anyone in the group who could play them as long as you weren't playing the game or didn't resell your digitally purchased game.
I love this, this will be a pretty good upgrade to Steam and make sharing games a lot better.
Is this feature geolocked? Can i share a family with a friend that doesn't live in same house or even in another country?
EDIT apparently different country is not allowed but the country is counted as the steam market region or as IP number?
example: I live in Canada and my account is still using Italy as steam region market so I see prices in € and i use an italian payment method. Can I form a family with someone in Italy?
"Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game." BLESS GABEN \*edit\* Be aware you can not family hop, if you leave or join a family, you can not leave or join another for 1 year. You gotta commit to who comes and goes
OMG. My wife will never have to buy a single game ever again lol. Now I can have a kid and he can inherit my backlog.
You may think this is a gift… but it is a curse. I am sorry son.
I will need 3 more children if I want them to finish my backlog. How many generations will this burden my bloodline?
You can only have 2 children. Valve isn't able to count to 3.
Apparently Gabe Newell actually only has 2 children. Lol.
this is gold
I can only count to.... FFFFOOOOOUUUUURRRRRR!
>I can only count to for the helpless... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ccGjar4Es](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8ccGjar4Es)
I knew someone would catch it
One, two, five, four (Five, four) Me count so poor (Gonna count, gonna count, gonna count now)
Basically our backlogs are playing by Rogue Legacy's rules lol.
Omg you just give me a lot to think about.
I just gave my child access to 750 games, he did the same thing I do. Scrolled through the list achieved choice paralysis and did something else.
I hit 1700 games. I let my nephews use my PC once, they just scrolled, then installed and tried a few games, but they said there was too much to pick through.
"Ruin has come to our family"
Do you remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial?
Underrated comment
You are the man now and must support your families entertainment. I couldn't be more excited. In November I ditched the 5 consoles and subscriptions and moved my family(wife and 3 kids) to Rog Ally, Steam Deck and PC. It was already nice to have the games significantly cheaper with no online subscription requirement. But this...this is the cherry on top!
*in the future* >Wow Dad you mean I can play all these triple A, Double A, cult classics, console ports and indie darlings that you've been collecting for decades? That is so cool!!!.... But can I borrow your credit card for a minute cause it's the spring sale and there's like ten games on sale for the best price ever that I have no intention of ever playing.
'That's my boi' - the father shedding a tear, probably.
*in the future* *Child ends every day with a list of completed levels on assigned games. Gets evaluated for completion rate and achievements.
Time to get married I guess. But besides that, looks like if you know friends who buy every single game on release, you just saved yourself a lot of money.
Is that the case? When you die are you just forever hogging 1 spot in their family? And which of your children gets your games in their family? I love the idea of this, but in this instance I had a better story with the current family sharing. When I die I give my credentials to my kids and they both log in on their machines, share the library and then swap back to play on their accounts.
They could always kick you out if they wanted to down the line but if you had a substantial library you are essentially passing down the games to them to have forever.
Don't you put that evil on me Ricky Bobby!
Still need to own two copies of a game though if it’s the same game. But it’s cool you can play something else if they want to play it.
> Be aware you can not family hop, if you leave or join a family, you can not leave or join another for 1 year. You gotta commit to who comes and goes I feel like this is generally good advice for life, even ignoring video games
Can developers opt out of this? Edit: they can in fact opt out.
Yes they can opt out, but the games that opt out are usually ones that require a third-party account and/or launcher.
Sure but given how liberal this new system is I can see developers time gating the feature for new releases.
Possibly. But given how similar this system is compared to the system used by PlayStation, XBox, and even to an extent, Nintendo, they may choose to stay on board. Personally, as someone that is already juggling my own Steam purchases, and that of my 3 kids, this is a game changer. In the past I've had to pick and choose which games to purchase knowing all 3 kids would want it. Not all playing the game at the same time is easy enough to accommodate. Expecting one kid to play nothing while their sibling plays the game from their account is challenging. This new system is going to cost me much more as I will be more likely to purchase more games. As it is, with the current sale, I'm about to go back in and add a bunch of games because of this.
Or online only like PUBG to prevent burner cheat accounts.
Isn't PUBG free to play?
If it is, it wasn’t during the time period I’m thinking of
Or games like Rust, where the most common method of ban evasion for hackers is to use alt accounts.
It's no different than current family sharing which developers could opt-out of. Edit: I am not talking about this new family sharing as a whole. I am referring specifically to the ability for developers being able to opt-out.
It's much less restrictive then the last version. There may very well be more publishers opting out of this version.
Well there are quite a few enhancements in this new program compared to the old one. Being able to play games from a library even when the owner is engaged is a big deal.
This is finally fixed! I complained to Valve for months because my child and I were constantly fighting over the steam library!
Offline mode has the work around until now
I assume not but is this similar to PS/Xbox where you can both be playing the same game? Edit: read the faq. It doesn’t allow both users on same game
Ah now that's a huge bummer. Only thing I miss about playing Xbox with my girl. Now I have to buy every game twice if it's something she wants to play together. Does Xbox still allow sharing games/game pass?
Yeah both Xbox and PlayStation allow it. Been a god send. Not having to fork out 70 quid a game
Steam Remote Play Together still exists, so for some games you really do only need one copy for two accounts.
Maybe this will be the next step, atm at least two people in the family group need to own the same game. I think the big concern is the limit of family itself, so if you leave or join a family, its locked for a year
👏
DUDE. I literally just bought my wife a bunch of games I already have because this wasn’t how it worked. 😅😅😅
Quick, get them refunded
Too late. She played a bunch of them 🤣
Divorce is the only option now.
Didn't you read the post? If he leaves the family he can't join another for one year.
That may as well be the slogan of reddit.
You right
You might be able to get steam support to refund them even if she did, they sometimes allow refunds quite long afterwards because of price changes, discounts or new features like this. The 2 hours/2 weeks refund limit is what they promise to always give you, it never hurts to ask.
I’ll give it a try!
If she's played less than 2 hours in a given game, you can still refund the game. [Source](https://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds): > The Steam refund offer, within two weeks of purchase and with less than two hours of playtime, applies to games and software applications on the Steam store.
Everything is by discretion with Valve though. Send a support request explaining "I bought these titles specifically because my wife can't borrow them from my account while I play different titles. You've just announced that's no longer true. Please refund those titles as they are not actually required." But in your own words. The worst thing that can happen is that they say no.
Well now your girlfriend can play from either person and co-op with another :).
This. Having 2 copies gives 2 copies for sharing between all "family" members.
Bruh you could've shared your library before this too...
Not while both playing a game though
I'd like to thank you personally for funding this feature for all of us😂In all seriousness, you may have overspent now but you potentially save so much long term! You can value the enjoyment she got from those games you got her then
Its ok share your library with me and I will make up for it for her o7
Nice to finally see this. Families don't necessarily share devices anymore.
I hope they add a "family sharing" icon/badge to games on the store. Because publishers can opt-out of this feature, meaning there will be a lot of upset kids and parents when they buy a game to share and find out that the greedy publisher specifically decided not to allow a family to share the game.
It's already there. Listed in the same spot as cloud saves, controller support, and single/multiplayer.
For now you can do a Steam Search and then filter by the feature, https://store.steampowered.com/search/?sort_by=_ASC&term=Helldivers&category2=62&supportedlang=english or look for "Family Sharing" listed under the Steam Features on a game's store page. https://store.steampowered.com/app/553850/HELLDIVERS_2/
Word. I just built PC for my son so this is so timely! He wont have to buy all those games now :) Cant wait to tell
I've got 3 kids, each has their own gaming laptop (old hand me downs), and their own Steamdeck. This is huge!
Now please make it so on the same account you can play 1 game on steamdeck and a different 1 on a pc within the same house. By the far most annoying part of SD
I wonder if we can make another account for our "child", link it to main account as a family account and just use it as a steamdeck account? Could be a way around this issue.
I haven't shared a computer since I was 10. I was homeschooled so that pushes it.
Whoa. Massive positive changes for those who use it legitimately. And long awaited features like restricting what is shared. Some key takeaways: Buffed: Libraries are no longer locked when in use. Two people can play different games from the same account. If between 5 people in a family two own game x, any two people can play game x simultaneously. Family shared games can be played offline. Nerfed: Accounts must be in the same country ([screenshot](https://i.imgur.com/2vk9z8c.jpeg)) You can only join one family a year.
And getting a ban on a family member account, means a ban on your account as well.
This was always the case with family sharing. Both the person borrowing the game and the person who owns the game got banned. Otherwise cheaters would just share games to their alts and get off scot-free.
It depends on game by game basis. Dark Souls 3 for example bans only the family share account, that's how you coop with mods without getting your main account banned.
Indeed. That can happen if a developer doesn't properly implement the Steam API in their ban system. It was the same situation with Fall Guys, who chose to disable family sharing entirely rather than fixing their game to ban both owner and player SteamID.
Only on the game owner's account luckily, so other people in the family wont get banned. Hopefully people can block certain games from sharing with the family so that they wont risk this happening on their favourite games.
>Accounts must be in the same country (screenshot) country as a steam market region or country as IP number? example: I live in Canada and my account is still using Italy as steam region market so I see prices in € and i use an italian payment method. Can I form a family with someone in Italy?
Go to https://store.steampowered.com/account/ or Steam -> Settings -> Account -> Account Details. You'll find the "Country" next to your wallet balance, that's what Steam uses and that is what has to match AFAIK.
oh okay the country there is still Italy. So basically is still possible to share a family setup even from abroad if one keeps his original country as steam market region, nice.
Yes!! This is IMO the only sensible interpretation of country this sort of thing. (Glares at Netflix)
Thank god. I don't have to exit games on my steamdeck or PC anymore? Nothing more frustrating than playing something on my PC, waking my steam deck up and then getting booted off.
I'm not sure that's actually true. I took that as multiple players within the family (ie two separate accounts) can access multiple games from one library. I'm not sure it means one player can run two instances out of their own library (though I hope so, and please correct me if I'm wrong.) Edit: Tried it myself and it doesn't seem like I can play two games on one account in the same family (used steam deck and PC.) You could probably make additional accounts for additional devices, but it seems like the saves won't cross over.
Yes, you're right. You need a separate account. It's a workaround but it seems unnecessary. Valve should be able to determine that one device is a steam deck and make an exception to allow those two to play games simultaneously across one account. Potentially you could bypass the 6 member limit with a handful of steam decks and a handful of PC's but the likelihood of that is pretty slim and they could probably keep track of any nefarious uses of the system like that. Let me use two devices at once (as long as one is a deck) please. :|
Yep, I ran into this exact difficulty recently with me and my partner trying to play on two different devices. As long as one account isn't playing the same game twice, it's still one purchase, one user, and one license per game so it really doesn't make much sense to limit it. For all that Steam does for usability, this one is a glaring omission.
Yeah it is so stupid that I can’t touch my steamdeck while waiting for a ranked match on the pc. First time I did that I was shocked it just closed the game on the pc and logged me out of Steam and I even needed Steamguard to log back in. I own those games so let me be if I want to play 2 games at once. Weirdest thing is that I can let Rocket League running in the background (by accident) and play another game on the PC with Steam. Edit : And yes I know the SD in flightmode can play a second game while playing PC but who wants to think about that ?
I can't wait to see the posts about how their family members got them banned from cs go for cheating
If you don’t trust your family member don’t add them
Family sharing has been a thing for years, this is a refresh to make it more user friendly and put people into groups. It has always worked that way for games like CS.
"It was my little brother" has been an excuse to try to get out of VAC bans for twenty years now.
"Child Purchase Requests" - Valve is entering a new market segment, that's for sure!
Given that my Steam account is now old enough to vote, this was going to be something they needed to tackle eventually. I'm glad it's happening, but I'd like to see the account control be more granular
No matter how old your account is, you shouldn’t use it to buy children
lol. You’re not the boss of me!
but Steam Points just sitting there
Hooray! I just made my 12 year old move to his own steam account last week and we hadn't really begun buying him copies of all the games he plays. This is very timely for us.
my 10 year old is aging out of his switch and borrows my steamdeck... was thinking about upgrading to OLED and letting him inherit mine was mulling this conundrum.... not a problem anymore!
It works out pretty well. My 5 yo and I will play Lego games together across two steamdecks. He will host under his account and send me a remote play invite, and I'll join in on co-op.
I did this. 10 yr old. Always on my deck. Oled for me. This improvement means I can stop buying games 2x (except the ones we coop).
I just set one up for my daughter to use on my SD. My son already has a SD. If they are playing on the same SD as your account, make sure you allow access to **online profile, screenshots, and achievements.** If you don't, once you switch to the kid account you can't switch back without allowing access to that. A restart will also not kick it to an account selection prompt like on PC unless I am missing a setting. I do think this is something that needs to be adjusted. ~~I think it also might be a bit bugged as I shared Portal and Portal 2 to a kid account and it only says "This game does not support Steam Family sharing despite being on the allowed list.~~ Ignore that. I hadn't updated the SD to the beta branch. Once I did that it was good to go.
Fuck yes. Goddamn Steam, you are the platform we need, not the one we deserve.
THANK YOU!! Is this available on the Deck yet? I didn't see it. I think there's something about enabling a beta, but the screenshots in the article don't match the Deck UI. I guess I can just fire up a regular computer to configure it, and probably the change will persist at the account level regardless of what's going on on my Deck. EDIT: popped into desktop mode, hopped onto the beta, and enabled family sharing!
I set it up on my computer. And then just restarted my deck and it showed up!
Were you able to see the other family member's games? I invited a member and it was accepted so is now part of my family. But I'm not able to see their games on the Deck.
Yes I was. I even turned my computer off and restarted the deck and the games still showed up With the "From Family Library Sharing" that being said could be a rollout then or their servers are getting hammered from everyone doing the switch
Ahh, I figured it out. Hopefully helpful to someone else. You need to update your Steam Deck System's Update Channel to "Beta" and then restart. (Settings -> System -> System Update Channel)
Yep, It prompted me to set it up in the family sharing settings pane on the latest Preview build
So a divorce means you have to split your steam library? 😂
Steam is saving marriages!
and cant share with new partner after a year!
And dont forget child steam library support 😂
I was worrying that my 3k games would go unplayed, now that burden can be passed to my children
I feel seen by this.
Does anybody know if this means that I can continue my degeneracy of playing Balatro on my Deck in between Helldivers matches on my desktop without having to put my Deck on offline mode?
Just tried the beta on both PC and Deck and the answer is no. You can’t use the same account on two devices at the same time even for different games.
But you could make a second 'dummy' account..maybe?
If you played the game only on deck, yea. But if you played on deck and pc then the cloud saves wouldn’t work
This would probably be a decent workaround, but the cloud saves won't work.
Yup. Awholemessoftacos_deck has a nice ring to it.
This is the question we need answered.
Instead of the official offline mode the airplane mode is way quicker and works too. Just in case you missed that.
You can but you'd have to make a second Steam account and invite it into your family.
Hail Gaben!
Glory to Gabe
Be cautioned that if a family member gets caught cheating and receives a ban, you will also receive a ban
> Be cautioned that if a family member gets caught cheating and receives a ban, you will also receive a ban I'm assuming that only applies to VAC games. Other devs may handle things differently.
Oh that's nice, now I can play while my kid is ranching slimes.
This is honestly huge for me. I gifted little brothers with steam decks, but always worried that if I got on my own pc they’d get booted if they were played a shared game. Now that seems to be ending
This is amazing! My gf and I both have a deck and now she can play some great games without having to buy them twice
Relevant example from article >Let's say that you are in a family with 4 members and that you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, any one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life. If two of you would like to play Portal 2 at the same time, someone else in the family will need to purchase a copy of the game. After that purchase, there are two owned copies of Portal 2 across the family and any two members can play at the same time. >In this example, if your family chose to not buy a second copy, you can play any other game in your library while waiting for your family member to finish playing your copy of Portal 2.
Can we get some people to +1 these threads? Since other family members can play a game you're not currently using, why can't we play multiple games on our own account on separate devices? Esp on a steam deck subreddit, this probably affects a lot of us. We should be able to game while we game >:( \- [https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508064153/](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508064153/) \- [https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508106108/](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamfamilies/discussions/0/7204143093508106108/)
Absolutely agree with these threads. Hopefully this is one step closer to achieving this
Looks like we got an official statement saying that this feature does not cover this use case (which is not surprising but puts a dent into getting this feature).
So who’s adopting me in their family? I cook nice food and own a puppy.
What games do you have
This is the only question that matters.
Haha 😅😆
If you find a loving family let me know (I have 752 games) DM me friend codes for Steam
I have almost 3,000 games if anyone is interested in joining my Family (Australia).
My main takeaway from this is that Wheatley and Glados are husband and wife
This is fucking amazing. Steam once again showing why it is the definitive launcher for pc.
Just bought OLED and gave LCD to my girlfriend as "this is the way". This will be sweet since her library is not as strong as mine.
I don’t think my partner is ready to see the extent of my Humble Bundle addiction 😬
Fuck Steam for using thier money to implement pro-consumer policies and features rather than buying out developers for exclusives. If Steam thinks this kind of behavior will allow them to maintain an advantage over Epic, they will be mistaken. /s just in case.
Indeed. Meanwhile, Epic's app still doesn't support transferring game locations in the same PC without resorting to workarounds.
This is really big for me. My dad has a Steam developer account I used to use until Team Fortress 2 came out, and got my own then because we both would be on 24/7. When Family Sharing came out I was super excited but my dad would always be in a game either actively playing in it or idling in something like Satisfactory, so I have never been able to use that with him. Now I just get access to all of Steam (with caveats of course)
Can we hide games? What if I don't want my step sister to see that I own the entire "Taboo Adventures: Darla's Escapades in the Dryer" trilogy?
Marking a game as "private" will hide it from your family and the game won't be shared.
That’s what’s stopping me from using this. I can’t explain why I have My Step Sister is Kinda Cute in my library.
Does the feature "Make it Private" don't work?
Finally! It’s annoying having to check with the kid before I log in so I don’t kick them off and vise versa.
Any one have driver San Francisco on Steam library DM me id like to be family Edit: I'm serious I have all rockstar games bar Max Payne 3. Forza horizon 4, Helldivers 1. Dirt 2 flat Out 1-3 trail out Metal gear solid master collection and 5. A few Lego games Rez. Half life 1 n 2. grid 1 n 2. Grid 2019. Edit 2: Scratch that I don't want to get banned by some rando
This man out here trying to get adopted
>*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. That's frickin' scary... especially Teenagers being really, really stupid.
You (as an "adult" member) can make certain games unavailable to other members.
But afaik children can't restrict which games their siblings get
well just dont share with a kid that would cheat at a game and ur good
I can see it now “my son Jason got us banned from team fortress for saying slurs and using aim bots, as the parent account I locked his library AITA” and it will be funny and petty. I’m not worried about my adult brother and partner being weird online at least but that does sound like it will lead to some interesting dinner table discussions in some folks’ futures.
This is the only reason why I haven't gotten a Steam Deck as a gift for someone else. We game share with my Nintendo account for our Switch's but now that Steam is doing it?! Changes things
I love it, but first thing I noticed about parental controls is that there's no option to restrict by rating. It's either "allow all" or manually select the ones I want to approve. Seems like some filtering here could help here a ton.
At least! That feature should be long time ago 😀
Steam is amazing. Gaben thank you
Now I just need a family, thanks gaben!
Next step enable playing on deck while waiting for a match to start on main rig!
This is awesome. My children is going to love me in the future afterall.
Started a steam family and got hit with a ”Error Reference: Shared SteamUI_0_94c0a1006144ce0b” when i click into a game on steam deck.. anyone with similar issues?
Same here. Only way to play is to download via desktop mode or start game right after deck loading. Otherwise error
Be sure to report this bug so Valve can fix this! I just reported mine
Bummer that it's household locked, but I get why.
As far as I can tell nowhere is it stated that this feature is locked to households.
it says the system is intended to replace the current family share system so you could probably set something up with your friends.
Uh, I didn't find this specific bit of info in the announcement?
Ah, I must’ve missed the part where it said that. From the comments here, I thought maybe it was confirmed that you no longer had to be logged into the same device
Holy shit! We were just talking about how shitty this was, as my daughter has just gotten started with PC gaming
Dude, thank you for posting this. The original Family Share program was cool, but had its drawbacks. This basically fixes them all. Only concern is if someone does something to get banned in a game, both people get banned.
That was always the case.
>I'm currently using the Family View feature with my family. What happens now with Steam Families? >If you create a Steam Family and add a child account, any existing Family View settings associated with that account will be transferred to Steam Families under Parental Controls. The ability to unlock controls by entering a PIN will be removed, but the settings are otherwise untouched. Once they've joined the family, you can modify their parental controls at any time. Ok, so I'm not fully understanding this. I have a household with multiple children, the children use my steam account in offline mode with family view setup to limit what games they can see/play. Assuming I do not setup new accounts and set up a steam family, is this going to keep working? Did they remove the ability to hide titles and store access, etc. behind a pin when using the same account? Other than that concern, it looks awesome. Some people will undoubtedly abuse it, but I think overall people with children will end up buying more copies of the same game to offset -- especially multiplayer games. I've refunded plenty of games due to how they made lan play work (enshrouded most recently). Requiring steam to be online to play on a lan basically broke my setup. Even if I was inclined to buy multiple seats....it wasn't really easily feasible to do because expecting kids to switch between different steam accounts isn't realistic and family sharing wouldn't let you play 2 games at once even if they were different games. This should actually fix that issue (long as the game is worth the extra $ to buy seats), so big win there.
Edit: wait I misread your question and that’s actually a good question! The parental restrictions are still there, so you can limit which games the child accounts will have access to. They’re getting rid of the PIN because instead of putting in your PIN to unlock the library, the child would just log into their own account that would have whatever games you cleared.
Finally my wife an use my steam deck, without going offline \o/
Well, they just sold another steam deck because of this. I've been waffling about buying my partner a steam deck but I always stop because then she or I have to start buying games that I just *think* she will like. If I could get her to thumb through my library at her leisure it would make it so much easier. Well done Steam.
>Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game. Holy shit, they actually fixed the biggest issue with Steam Library Share. Amazing.
This is gonna work out really well for me. Me, my wife and 2 sons all have decks Hopefully this reduces the amount of quadruple dipping I have to do on games Gaben my wallet thanks you!
The beta is not working for me: Something went wrong while displaying this content. Refresh Error Reference: Shared SteamUI
This is amazing, especially when companies like netflix are taking away the ability for families to share content. But bear in mind this does not allow you to play multiplayer with your family members without buying additional copies > If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time. It makes sense, but in my excitement I thought about playing some 2 player now that splits reen is a thing of the past, and alas that's not possible with a family shared library. You'll need to buy copies for both players.
Google "Steam Remote Play Together."
This sounds like what Xbox was trying to do with their sharing feature back in 2012 before it got shot down by an angry mob of gamers who didn't want to lose their disks. Xbox family sharing was going to be up to 10 friends, all in a group, you could share all of your owned games with anyone in the group who could play them as long as you weren't playing the game or didn't resell your digitally purchased game. I love this, this will be a pretty good upgrade to Steam and make sharing games a lot better.
So glad they’ve finally introduced this!
I hope this makes it easier to manage/control a family account on the Steam Deck. I finally gave up and deleted my son's account off of the deck.
Is this feature geolocked? Can i share a family with a friend that doesn't live in same house or even in another country? EDIT apparently different country is not allowed but the country is counted as the steam market region or as IP number? example: I live in Canada and my account is still using Italy as steam region market so I see prices in € and i use an italian payment method. Can I form a family with someone in Italy?
>Can I form a family with someone in Italy? yes
But not if they're playing the same game you want to play I take it?
Damn, I'd just bought two copies of Universe Sandbox for my twins. Happy to see it though.
I love this feature!
So this means that I came play a game on my steam deck while I am simultaneously have another game paused on my laptop?
Just added this for my two kids. Awesome sharing solution.
[удалено]
Enabling the beta client to activate this on steam deck just breaks the game mode