Steam Family Sharing Available to All Users Now

[Zkuq]

-CraZed- said:

Zkuq said:

-CraZed- said:
Steam Family Sharing is now available to all users...

And no one should care at all. I know I don't. I have been using it throughout the beta and it is a throw away feature in its current form.

It's easier and less intrusive to just share your games through offline mode and be done with it. At least you can actually share then. Having to stop playing a game while the owner plays a different game is just dumb and makes the service pointless.

Playing on the same account is a good way to mess up your account statistics and saves, offline or not. Family Sharing gives each player seperate settings, achievements, and saves, and I think that's a pretty huge benefit. Account statistics and such getting messed up is exactly the reason I didn't let my brother play on my account when I was younger.

EDIT: And for the record, this is supposed to be similar to letting a relative/friend play on your PC/console. Of course you won't be able to do it when your friend/relative is doing it. There's a reason they call it Family Sharing, not Game Sharing or Library Sharing.

It isn't supposed to be similar to letting someone borrow your console or your actual PC. It is supposed to be similar to loaning a physical game. If it were limited to not being allowed to play the same game you might have a point but it limits the entire account. You shouldn't have to stop playing game A while someone else is playing game B and so on. Simply logging in and placing your PC into offline mode to play without interuption while allowing a friend/family member to play a seperate or even the SAME game is far better IMHO than the so-called sharing plan.

So far the ONLY plus for the Family sharing option is the ability to filter allowed games which is little more than a parental control feature for those with kids. Outside of that Offline mode is just a better "sharing" solution IMHO.

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.