The limitations make it so tedious that it's not worth it for me. I'll just keep playing on my brother's account.

Which is fine. Online enabled games won't allow two people to play off a single game purchase regardless. But having one or more PC's in ofline mode will still allow the connected account to play online while the othersare playing a single player game. WIth the family sharing enabled and everone online that won't be possible.

And you can't "trick" the family sharing by going offline from a connected account while playing a shared game.

Offline mode is just fine afor me and if ayone has visited ANY of the myriad Steam discussion groups on this very topic you will see quite a lot of Steam users are disenchanted with the Family sharing option. As many have noted there, going offline is just a better way to share their Steam library with close friends and relatives. Steam implemented a system that doesn't even allow you to do what we have already been able to do for over ten years now.

Well that was just how I understood the wording they used, but I agree it seems odd, and everyone else is saying it's just for simultaneous game playing (which makes sense they would block that otherwise you could buy 1 or 2 game copies between friends and play online mulitplayer)

Perhaps Steam considers each game purchase as an "account"

Oh, but I think you're confusing what it's supposed to be and what you want it to be. I don't think it's in publishers' interests to let you loan your games to your friends, thus the feature isn't supposed to allow that. And like it or not, the benefit I said for Family Sharing as-is is a benefit. Maybe it's not relevant to you but it's a benefit nevertheless. Things could be better for us consumers but at least this is something - and again, they'd call it something else if it wasn't supposed to do what I said it's supposed to do.

*BOLD* Then what exactly in your estimation is Valve allowing us to share if not the games?

Of course it isn't relevant to me and dare I say it most other Steam users either. As I already stated to another poster just take a look in the Steam community discussions about this very subject and you'll see a whole lot of other Steam users who feel the same way I do. Which is, 'so what, we have been sharing our games for 10 years now without a formal, restrictive sharing plan. It's called Offline mode thank you very much.' :)

LOL!

If you were allowed to loan games freely to anyone, who would buy games anymore unless they wanted to play the game at launch? One person could buy the game, play it at launch, then loan it to their friends afterwards. Why would those people borrowing the game want to pay for it? The current system pretty much eliminates this problem by being so strict.

I know many people aren't happy about this, I'm not even trying to argue about it. I understand those people. But I also understand publishers in this case, because in an online world, free loaning would have a huge effect compared to loaning in a more traditional world. Nowadays, allowing free loaning would make it possible for you to loan the game to anyone in the world, as many people as you want, without any risk to the game you paid for. I don't think it's even in the spirit of being able to loan your possessions to other people because it's so broad. It would be beneficial for us, consumers, though.

This can already be done whether on PC via Steam (offline mode) or on a console with a physical disc and even digitally (PS3 can share between two systems at a time regardless who is logged in). And yet the games are doing just fine.

This idea that people will stop buying games if they can share is ludicrous. If they wanted to bring sharing on Steam above board they needed only to allow anyone in your registered circle of friends/family to play any game that is not being played at the same time. Otherwise people will just continue to use offline mode and not even bother using the family share feature as it is pretty much useless.

Not to mention offline line mode has the added benefit of not forcing you to stop playing Skyrim in the middle of a game because the main account has decided to play Portal 2.

Pro tip, owner off games set account to offline mode, still have access to all your games.

Offline mode is a hassle, involves giving out your account details which is an obvious security risk, physical discs are WAY different from online sharing because online sharing is instantaneous to anywhere in the world, and online sharing on consoles, again, is an obvious security risk and is very limited due to being limited to so few machines like you said yourself. For these reaons, online sharing and physical sharing aren't comparable in any meaningful sense.

And like I said, this feature has a pretty big benefit for certain people. I don't think this was ever intended to be as big as people want it to be, but it was intended to be a convenient feature for families. If you've ever lived in a family where there's only one computer and you have to share it with other people, you should know. And if you've lived in such a family, maybe you don't mind people messing up your account, saves, achievements, and such, but many people do mind that.

And let me repeat myself once more: I fully understand your point of view and I agree, it would be much more convenient and beneficial for us, consumers. For that reason, you don't have to repeat it again. I'm not arguing against your opinion about what would be good for you, I'm arguing about why it might not be in the interests of the people who sell those games. There's two sides to every coin, and I want to see them both, not just the one I like more.