Steam plans to implement sharing service

[Watcher]

Steam is going to implement a sharing service. To allow others on your network or in your contacts list to play some of the games you own.

http://store.steampowered.com/sharing/

Essentially after the Xbox One removed this feature, Valve caught the rebound and scored.

There are some notable restrictions. Like players cannot play games together while one is sharing it. The owner has complete control and only one user at a time can play it. Essentially while the sharing system is unlimited it's more or less a big alternative way for Steam to market games to players.

 

[Fibonacci]

Seems like it would be easier to just make a family account, and then register individual accounts to the family account, like how Netflix currently works, rather than having a long string of authorised machines.

 

[Watcher]

Seems like it would be easier to just make a family account, and then register individual accounts to the family account, like how Netflix currently works, rather than having a long string of authorised machines.

Well one specific restriction is multiple users cannot play games off the same account. If the owner tries playing a game it boots the other guy out.

Personally I see Steam largely doing it for two reasons. 1 removing account sharing, and 2 allowing users to market games to each other more effectively than producing a demo.

I say 1 more specifically because I know someone who lent his account to his friend to play a specific game. His friend lent it to a friend of his who immediately changed the password and sold it to a German guy for 100$. Now it just provides a much more convenient way of sharing games with people.

 

[José Mourinho]

Official Steam Group:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/familysharing/