Re: Steam Families

On 3/20/2024 11:06 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 So, Valve is introducing "Steam Families", which seems to be an
updated version of Steam's previous "Family Sharing" plan.* In
essence, it allows gamers to share their library of games with other
family members, rather than requiring everybody to have their own copy
of the game (although, if more than one person wants to play the same
game at the same time, you'll still need multiple copies).
 The earlier "Family Sharing" feature was similar, except it was more
restricted; for instance, with the older version, if I shared my
library with Donna, she could play my games... unless I was already
playing something. It didn't matter if she wanted to play "Half Life"
and I was playing "Call of Duty"; only one game per library could be
played at a time. Weirdly, even if Donna and I both owned "Half Life",
if we were sharing libraries, only one person could play "Half Life"
at the same time. The new "Steam Families" will do away with these
limitation.
 Other features include an ability to restrict which games you make
accessible (good if you don't want your kids to access your M-rated
titles). Also, kids can request that the 'host' library can purchase
specific games; a better alternative than giving the kids your credit
card to buy for their own accounts.
 Still, as good as all this may be, it doesn't solve the one issue I
really have with the whole thing, and that is that each person (or
computer) needs to have a separate Steam account. You can't just buy
little Donnie his own PC, log-on to Steam with your account, and let
him use that.
 (Well, you can, but you yourself won't be able to play your games
until lil' Donnie stops playing).

That's what I ended up doing for my son, He doesn't have much he wants to play on Steam, and as long as both of us weren't playing a game online I could put his or mine offline and play Whater we wanted at the same time.  If I was playing something that was online, I'd either go offline if that was viable or play something on another platform, like GOG or check out the freebies on Epic and Amazon.  He wanted to try fallout 4 and fortunately that was free on Epic so I set him up on that.
I also always check GOG first when buying games before Steam as they don't have that issue for the whole platform, as long as playing doesn't require logging into something specific to the game.  I'll happily pay a few dollars more for that, especially if my son is interested in a particular game.
The only thing I really don't like is very few games are set up for local multiplayer on PC and even then those are usually console ports. There's games I would try to co-op with him, but I have to buy another copy and have another account, which previously would mean he'd have to keep logging in and out of that account and my account with my help (I don't give him my password) depending on which game he wanted to play.
At least this eliminates that issue if I buy another copy, I just don't think that's fair considering all the console co-op games.
Heck some console games have split screen co-op but their PC ports don't (I'm especially looking at you EDF World Brothers! which I think my daughter would've liked to play with me.)

And the idea of having to create
accounts for each kid seems sort of creepy. There is enough
data-harvesting done on kids already.

I had to do that with Roblox for them.

 Just let me use the same account on multiple computers, and lock it so
only one instance of each game can be used at the same time. That's
what I really want, Valve. Maybe give parental controls to lock down
access to certain Steam features per computer. It can all be done
without requiring kids to sign away their privacy. Is that really too
much to ask?

This seems like a better solution as they can share all the games I've bought, AND I can buy an extra copy for them if they want to co-op, and I don't have to fiddle with offline mode.  Still not my favorite solution, which is what GOG does, where I don't have to worry about any of that.
--
-Justisaur
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