The Steam Families beta has been announced by Valve.
Previously, if you were playing a game online, another family member could not play a different game from your library. If a third family member wanted to play a game from the shared library, they would not be able to. The Steam Families beta seems to solve this, by allowing different people to play different games from the same library at the same time.
One solution would be to make a new account for each game purchase, so if someone wanted to play a game, they would use the per-game account and play that game. However this becomes cumbersome and inconvenient in its own way.
"Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game."
"Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members."
There are also parental controls, and children can make purchase requests.
Having a family of gamers, the implementation of expanded family features and sharing of digital purchases is something I've been wanting for a long time, bringing it closer to the flexibility of physical games when it comes to sharing them with others.
A game's developer controls whether a game is eligible for sharing with Steam Families. All developer settings for the previous Steam Family Sharing feature are being brought forward to Steam Families. So, if a game is currently eligible for Family Sharing, it will remain so in the new system unless the developer chooses to opt-out later.
In addition, not all games can be shared due to technical limitations. For example, titles that require an additional third-party key, account, or subscription in order to play cannot be shared between accounts.
This part is not ideal, but overall this is an important step forward with DRM-based digital purchases. DRM-free has the greatest flexibility but not all games are available this way. I hope other DRM-based digital marketplaces will strive for greater flexibility for digital purchases.
Here is the GameSpot article.
Are you excited about these features? Do you want others to adopt these features? What do you hope to see?
Log in to comment