I didn’t realize the new Steam family sharing was so detrimental to close ones away from each other. Their Guide & FAQ is clear with their intentions:
While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.
To that end, we expect the requirements for participating in a Steam Family to change over time as we monitor its usage and add requirements to keep usage in line with this intent.
Last line is pretty brutal. Apparently even family members living in the same country & different household might be in for a surprise eventually. That’s really saddening because at first glance this overhaul sounded amazing considering a single game was locked by play instead of the whole library.
Completely anecdotal but I was able to add my brother-in-law to my Steam family without any problem and he lives about 125km from me.
The requirement is absolutely something more arcane than “same household” and Valve are keeping quiet on the actual specifics. It’s possible that the fact that I’ve been there multiple times and have logged into Steam on their wifi in the past was enough to confirm that this is a place with close relation to me. Who knows though.
It’s just like all the steaming services. They’ll look the other way for a time, but then crack down whenever it makes the most financial sense.
As long as we support Epic then we can avoid Steam’s enshittification
No, that’s not it. Drag’s dragon has been to drag’s house and signed into steam on drag’s PC, but we weren’t able to get family sharing working.
ITT: SWIM uses Steam.
The idea is that it makes it so you don’t have to mess with save data when you can access your big brother’s pc
Tip: You can share your library with someone by giving them your account sign in information, having them download what they want to play, and then having them turn their device’s internet off. This will allow you to continue using your account as normal, and your friend will be able to play the games they downloaded at any time as long as steam is not allowed to connect to the internet. If it is connected, they can play the games as long as you are not playing something on a different device.
*Only share your account info with someone you absolutely trust. It’s always a risk to share credentials but use your best judgement.
“*Only share your account info with someone you absolutely trust. It’s always a risk to share credentials but use your best judgement.”
As someone who is estranged from my blood family, it’s interesting to me how this category of people who I would feel comfortable sharing my credentials with maps pretty well onto who I would consider to be my found family
There needs to be some kind of gold buried somewhere in this new version otherwise I can only see it as another step on the enshittification carousel for an app that has slowly been getting worse over the years.
Nah, the new family sharing is way better. With the new vetsion, I can play games from my wife’s library even if she is playing a different steam game at the same time.
For international family it sucks ass.
You’re so lucky you get to live in the same country as your spouse
This is a betrayal. Drag is not a Valve supporter anymore.