The issue is without family sharing, you can't share games. But with it enabled if you both own a certain game, it gets confused and only 1 of you can play it at a time.

But if I buy game Y, and play it, steam will then prevent you from playing my game X at the same time.

What's worse, even with hindsight I'm not sure how a parent should organize 2-3 accounts to allow all what "family sharing" implies. And consider that kid now plays some Mario game but in a year or two would play Wolfenstein, so it's not easy to separate by "my" and "their" games.

Uh seriously.. what the f?

They very fact that they added library sharing is AMAZING in itself. And this has been on for like.. 10 years or something already?

It's perfectly reasonable to make it basically lock the whole library. Otherwise you could have like 5-10 friends and each buy 20% of the games but as long as you aren't playing the same ones at the same time you basically have to buy 5x less copies. And you sound exactly like the kind of person who would just take advantage of this and ruin it for the rest of us- since you are already complaining about something free.

And as others have said- the workaround is pretty easy. If you own the game and other wants to borrow, just go offline. Or worst case you have the other person log into your account and go offline. And Steam knows people do that- but they don't do anything to discourage it because it is some effort.

>Now if I'm buying a game the first thing I'm looking is if there's is a non-Steam version

Amazing.. they implement something that ONLY HELPS and you never want to buy from them again.

They said they wanted to share among their family. Your interpretation assumes more aggressive and less reasonable behavior. My guess is that while such friend sharing is a risk, it's unlikely to be from families like the poster above. In fact I doubt such sharing would widespread since many folks want trophies and trading cards in their own accounts.

This is a bit harsh if not straight offensive. I reckon you don’t have kids, you’re building your Steam library for yourself? In my opinion, I had a perfectly valid expectation that if I paid full licenses for 2 different games, I’d be able to play both of them at the same time on two PCs. You know, like in old CD/DVD days. Steam was supposed to be superior to that, not inferior?

Sure, some games can work in offline mode, but not all of them.

> they implement something that ONLY HELPS and you never want to buy from them again.

Once you make a mistake to purchase some games for kids using your existing account, you can’t go back. Family sharing doesn’t help you any more, it creates problems. I can’t buy Flight Simulator on Steam just for myself, even if it won’t be ever shared with kids. They’ll kick me out if they want unrelated game from a library.

Few days ago we had a family meeting to decide how to purchase Hogwarts Legacy, talking into consideration which kid plays which games on which accounts, should it be Steam, Epic, on kids account or mine… It felt bizare. I bought it on Epic at the end. Not that Epic is better in this regard, it’s just that kids have separate accounts there from the start. Notice that we want to play on single computer, no sharing whatsover, fully priced $59 license, but there’s still a risk it won’t work if other kid plays let’s say Among Us on another PC. Should we create a new account for new game? Will we be banned? I even wanted to buy it on DVD for these reasons but it was not an option. How is this user friendly?

This is a cautinary story for future parents, or for those whose kids will be gamers in a year or two.

Ha. Even without family sharing Steam is still the best platform for game purchases. Family sharing not being what you want hardly invalidates the rest of the platform.

I always saw family sharing as something for a family that shares a single PC, letting the family only have to purchase one copy of the game for the household.

FWIW, I think steam is the lesser of many weevils so I deal with it.

How is this better than it was?

It's a lot better in many ways, even if not specifically in sharing.

This is something that Apple gets really right, and that Valve and Microsoft (I don't have experience with Sony or Nintendo family ecosystems) get really wrong.

I can't even buy multiple copies of a co-op game on the family Steam account that the family can use to play together.

The consoles all have a pretty similar system at this point. You get a master console where it can play everything offline/online and any user account can access anything the account set the console as master owns and then you can log into another console and use everything the account owns while online. There might be minor differences among platforms but that's the jist of it. It's kinda bad for Nintendo Switch with the second system being a handheld though. Still better than Steam's. In the good ol' days Sony allowed you to have 5 PS3s and there was no difference but it got abused so they cut it to two.

It's up to the developer as of iOS 14: https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/4/22154178/apple-family-sha...

> The consoles all have a pretty similar system at this point.

Not on Xbox, which is my primary gaming device. Here's how the "home console" feature works today:

> "Xbox home console is an existing feature that allows you to share games and content with other people who sign in to your home console with their profile. However, it’s limited to that device, so friends and family must sign in to the console you identify as your home Xbox to access those benefits."

On the bright side, something new called "Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family" is coming. It provides an Apple-like experience for games on Game Pass, which is a good start:

> "When you share with Friends & Family, the primary account holder and up to four additional members each get their own unique access to all Xbox Game Pass Ultimate games, content, and benefits, regardless of what device they play on. All the people you invite can play at the same time, even the same game."

https://support.xbox.com/en-US/help/subscriptions-billing/ma...

As the FAQ I quoted above appears to confirm, you can share games with other profiles, but only on the single device blessed as the "home console".

Of course, you can always pass physical discs around. IIRC, for digital purchases there's a convoluted way to use a single purchase with multiple profiles on multiple devices, but not at the same time. In other words, co-op requires multiple copies of a game. If purchased digitally, they must be bought using separate profiles since one profile can't buy a game twice.

It's quite possible I'm wrong about some facet(s) of this. Hopefully "Xbox Game Pass Friends & Family" fixes this, but if it only fixes the problem for Game Pass games I'm not sure how much value it'll have for me.

What some people do is they set their friend's Xbox as their home console and their friend sets their Xbox as their home console and then they both just stay logged in and online on their respective consoles. This lets them play all their friend's games but they can still play their own.

If you're using Steam Big Picture, you can leave multiple accounts logged in to every device and buy games on them; I did this when I ran fighting game tournaments during COVID--accounts named [channel]1, [channel]2, and so on. (Why you can't do this with the desktop UI is certainly a wart, though.)

Given this, rearchitecting their infrastructure (which pretty universally considers a single account a single active user) for a fairly niche case is probably low on the list.

I'm not sure I understand. Is your idea that instead of per-person accounts, you would create new accounts for subsequent copies, and then the family would work out who logs in as what user?

> Given this, rearchitecting their infrastructure (which pretty universally considers a single account a single active user) for a fairly niche case is probably low on the list.

Families wanting to play co-op games together is a niche?

Yep - that is the intended behavior at present, near as I can tell. Swap accounts as necessary.

> Families wanting to play co-op games together is a niche?

No, but hotdesking and a licensing service is something I don't think I've ever heard friends with kids ask for. (Steam has a licensed/hotdesked model for businesses, where that is a more common thing.)

It's an interesting idea, but I don't want to buy a copy for every family member when we'll never use more than 2 simultaneously.

> No, but hotdesking and a licensing service…

Steam Family Library Sharing already checks that there's an available license, and that it's not currently in use. I just want the ability to buy multiple licenses.

Or better yet, I'd prefer that Valve and other game app stores do what Apple does, and allow users within families to play whatever's "on the shelf", separately or together.

Also kind of frustrated any time I see someone complain about this, there is a horde of people saying "you're wrong and greedy, steam is awesome".

I realize doing this the "right" way might be impractical from a licensing standpoint (or people cheating the system). It still pales in comparison to hard-copies though in this regard.

reading you post again. i think you use family sharing wrong.

> Yes, I could create a new account but then I'm locked out form all the games

family sharing needs multiple account