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So how do I create a Steam Family? I can't see an option to do so anywhere but I am most likely just missing it... or it hasn't been rolled out to the UK yet
edit: found it! For anyone else who is lost like me, go to the top right and click on your use name and then Account Details. From there, Family Management is on the left and it's obvious
Soon they will need a Family Crypt to archive the games of dead generations
This bit is a bit fucked up:
What happens if my brother gets banned for cheating while playing my game?
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.
I mean, someone should get banned from cheating. I can see why this happen though, since the account playing does not own the game the account which has the game linked gets banned instead. If the account cheating has the game they are instead playing on their copy and that gets banned instead (i assume).
However the ban should be linked to the account and not the copy of the game. I do not understand why this isnt the case. Maybe because someone could just make a new account and link that to play on instead, therefor never having to buy more than one copy of the game while cheating.
My question is, when there are 5 people with 5 copies of a multiplayer game in the pool, and the 6th member without a copy gets banned, which of the other 5 members gets banned?
Best guess? Whichever account gave account 6 permission to play their game.
Either account 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 will be the user that gives 6 the permission to play their game, so it follows they're the one that (I'm assuming) will get banned also. It's a good question you raise and I'd be interested to know for sure myself.
They send their enforcement squad to all houses involved.
I think it's a great rule. If you're sharing your library with others, don't be am asshole and cheat. If you do you'll be a disappointment to them too. More social pressure to not cheat is only a positive in my opinion, but also I will never cheat and I only share my library with people I'm confident won't cheat as well. I don't associate with people who want to ruin other's fun. If you do then that's on you. It's your choice to risk getting banned.
It also stops people from buying a game, sharing it to themselves on an alt account and using cheats. Then just spinning up a new alt account at no cost when the first one gets banned.
Just hide those games from your shared library and you will be safe
Not sure I agree, how else are they meant to prevent the ocean of "It wasn't me, it was my brother" excuses from hackers smurfing accounts?
I'd recommend (to everyone) that if you're unsure -or have even the slightest doubt about the person you're going to give access to your Steam account- to politely decline and play it safe.
They should know the account it is that's currently using it. They're not using your account when playing your games
Unless I've misunderstood; that's exactly why I asked the question in my original comment. I'll explain my / the reasoning:
I own a game on a Steam account (A) and want to hack (and evade bans) using another Steam account (B).
I share my library/game from account (A) to account (B) then hack on account B and only account B gets banned... What's to then stop me from making Steam account C, D, E, F... etc? Absolutely nothing. Hence the double ban.
I stress that if you do share a game / your Steam library with others you trust them explicitly.
Restrict the number of accounts that can join that family group. And/or remove the ability to share the library from the main account for repeated offenses.
Or require multiple family members accounts to have to cheat before the owner account is banned.
Bro you can just make a fake account and say it was your little brother , they literally have no idea who signed up or if they lied about account details 🙄
It is not different from how the previous shared libraries worked. I guess it's there to stop cheaters from buying a single copy of the game and sharing it with throwaway accounts.
That sort of behaviour skills be easy to track if it happens more than once though
Being able to evade a ban once is already a problem. Now you need to ban every cheater twice to really ban them.
Rip my shared library with gf living in NO and me in NL :(
How does this effect that?
My guess is this, which is way at the bottom of the support FAQ page (which can be found at the bottom of the posted FAQ section):
"I cannot join a Steam Family"
If you cannot join a Steam Family, it is likely for one of three reasons:
I cannot invite my gf to the Families, while we could do Library share before just fine.
Why not?
Replied in other posts, it likely is because you have to be in the same country/steam store region or something...
A lot of work but: have her VPN into your residential network and send her traffic through your ISP for a while.
What is this. Because I'm pretty upset that the games I paid for can't be played on different pc's. My daughter wants to pay stardew valley while I'm online with family on satisfactory. I have to take the other pc and go into offline mode. This wasn't the solution. Even with adding members I didn't think I did it right. So does this fix it? Can my family member log into stardew online with her cousin while I'm on another lan game?
Yes, you can play Satisfactory while she is playing Stardew Valley, while both of you are online. You now have a number of copies of each game in the family. If 2 members own the same game, then two different members in the family can play both copies at the same time
Perfect. Finally. I understand needing two copies of the game to play online (one game code per user). But local split screen shouldn't be that way and neither should playing seperate games force me into individual play sessions. Each game code should have capacity to run an individual account. Not one account to each owned game.
This has been my gripe with steam and purchased digital games vs physical games since it's concept. It felt like I was renting play sessions with my ID license rather than owning the games I paid for.
I have three sons, they live in the West Coast, I live in the Midwest. I can't join a family with them. That's a bummer.
Why not? My Steam Family is just a group of friends spread out all across the country. Geographic distance shouldn't be an issue.
I don't really know how it works but according to a lot of other people here it doesn't work unless you are in the same region. This isn't the only person here saying they can't use it because they don't live near their family.
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game
Hm.. so if you don't trust your kids to not do dumb things in games you also play then don't share them
As much as i don’t really like this there would have been a loophole where you use fake temporary family members to continue cheating.
Back in the day some games also banned your homes external ip address which would have a similar effect.
Imagine moving to a new place and being banned because the last person who lived there cheated in the specific game you play lol.
I tried to sign up for a Facebook account (hate it, but market place seemed like my only option for something I was after) and had my account automatically banned on creation. Twice. They demanded photos of my face, which I begrudgingly gave them, and still never approved my account.
I signed up for a new one with the exact same information from my mobile data plan instead and it worked fine, and I never got banned
Ip address isn't tied to the house, but the subscriber.
But most ISP don't have static Ip for private customers, so you experience just suddenly being banned because you received an Ip address someone got banned.
I mean, it's been here for beta years and yes, it is absolutely fantastic. The one year penalty keeps me from handing it out like candy to extended family and friends (plus we all have that cousin who can't be trusted) while I can let my wife and kids play games on my account without them kicking me out of mine.
The parental controls are good too, although I'm not using them yet since my kids are too young to really pick their games from the library themselves.
Oh very nice! My partner and I share libraries and it was really clunky the way it worked before.
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members' libraries, even if they are online playing another game.
This is a great improvement to this feature. It's refreshing when these type of convenience features are considered and implemented.
Just wished it worked across countries/steam store regions
I wish they made all games require sharing
This is fantastic! I was just trying to set up my kid on a computer and the old way was seeming too clunky and slow, and she wanted to do something else so we never finished it.
Finally! Now I can switch back to the "normal" Steam Beta build for other experimental features, Steam Family was on a separate beta build which didn't allow me to try other things...
The family beta had weird issues on Linux (Gnome/Wayland) until recently too so I'm glad to see this getting a full release.
I've been on it for a while (on Garuda, no Gnome) and it's been stable. I don't recall any issues. Maybe I just got lucky.
It's fixed now. But flatpak steam on gnome/Wayland would display a black screen on the store when opted into the family beta for a while. Stable was unaffected.
This is a great feature! I can finally have both my kids play whatever game they want at the same time.