You probably thought family plans were just for cellular data. Well, sir or madame, you are wrong. Soon enough you'll be able to share games you purchased through Steam with your friends and family, as well. The king of downloadable gaming has just announced Steam Family Sharing, which will allow customers to authorize certain devices to access their library of lendable titles. The same way that you're able to loan out a physical copy of a game or a book, you'll now be able to lend your digital downloads to others. And, if you see that your brother has a game you've been on the fence about, you can request access and try it for yourself. There are, of course, limitations. Your library can only be used by one person at a time. So if you, the primary user, log in to spend some quality time with Call of Duty Ghosts, your buddy checking out Bastion ahead of Transistor's release will have only a few minutes to either save and quit, or buy the title for themselves. Family Sharing will be launching in a limited beta next week, and you can sign up for it at the source link.

how will they check if two different people get access to the same library on two devices at the same time? with an "always on" measurement? until now you can access your library without being online but how shall that work?

Wow this looks awesome. Basically what the X1 could have been, but better?
I plan on buying a X1, but this is beyond awesome. MS needs to copy this model stat.

sounds like it.  not sure how they could bump the other user within minutes if they didn't require an online connection.  i'm guessing borrowing is an always online feature but maybe playing your own games can still be done offline.

how is it better?  i though xbone was going to let 9 people unlimited access even while you are playing the same game...

This sounds quite good, will propably share my library atleast with my bro and few close mates.

i believe for the same game it was only 2 people at the same time but 10 people could play 10 different games at the same time with microsofts system. well, something like that, i already forgot how it really was lol.

with this now it seems like the whole library is only playable if the owner doesn't play anything. 

Those were ultimately confirmed as timed demos but since it's not going to happen we don't have any real hands on confirmation.

This is a much better model, and besides steam has keys via humble bundle ($1 for all those fucking games) and deep, deep discounts. Something MS would not achive with the X1. So yeah...

that was a fake post on reddit and nothing more. a guy who posted it to let it look like shit but acting as if he worked on this and how great he found this idea.

i don't think anyone really knew, not even MS.  i still think MSs rumored family share sounded too good to be true, publishers would have gone ape shit.  this sounds far more plausible and legit... aka restrictive and limited.