By Nelson Schneider - 09/15/24 at 02:53 PM CT
Back in 2013, Valve introduced a feature in their PC gaming storefront, Steam, called “Steam Family Sharing,” which allowed relatives (and friends) to share their Steam libraries with each other, with the burdensome restriction that if a friend or relative was playing a game from your account, you couldn’t play ANY games in your account without kicking the share-ee out of their game first.
In March of 2024, Valve announced that Steam Family Sharing was going to be replaced by a re-designed take on the feature, simply called “Steam Families.” Allegedly, Steam Families would solve that glaring flaw in Steam Family Sharing by taking each copy of each game in a familial group and treating them separately, effectively transforming the collective game pools of all family members into a single pool, operated like a public library, in which each game license can be “checked-out” by any family member without impeding other family members from playing anything else in the group’s collection.
I was really excited about this feature, and had plans to setup a Steam Family with the MeltedJoystick Crew after the feature entered open Beta testing last week… but after reading some first-hand feedback from other Steam members in the feature’s forum… I’m not touching it.
The first, and worst, caveat with Steam Families that renders the feature useless for anyone but 1950s Golden Age Nuclear Families is that Valve pays attention to the IP addresses belonging to family members. If everyone trying to access the shared game pool isn’t doing so from under the same roof on the same IP address, the whole thing falls apart.
Then there’s the other “little” problem wherein if someone joins a Steam Family, discovers that the feature doesn’t work for them, or ends up leaving the household, they will likely want to leave the family and join another one. “Not so fast!” says Valve, as there is a waiting period between leaving one Family and creating or joining another… ONE YEAR.
Granted, Steam Families is still in the Beta testing process, and it’s possible that Valve will remedy these issues before the official 1.0 release. But right now, the company is meeting the complaints in their Steam Families forum with complete silence.
