Steam Announces Family Sharing

Today Steam announced its new "Family Sharing" Program. This announcement can only be seen as a leg up on the next-gen consoles, particularly in light of Microsoft's stumble with its own game sharing program.

The new program from Steam allows a user to share their Library with up to 10 other devices (e.g., friends, family, etc.). The sharing is done at the Library level - not the game level. If your Library is being shared, and you come in to play a game - any game - the sharing user will be ejected. They will have a few moments to exit the game, or buy it themselves. But, you can't have 10 different people playing 10 different games out of your library.

This new program could be real boon for people wanting to sample games prior to purchasing, especially those games that lack a demo. This program could also pay dividends for the WSGF in our game analysis and fixing. One option we will explore is the option of a WSGF Test library. The site would be able to purchase games that a core group of Editors/Insiders could use to create Detailed Reports.

A variety of different users could get access to the titles for testing in various configurations such as Eyefinity, Surround, 5x1-P, 21:9, 4k, etc. Users such as Helifax, HaYDeN and dopefish could also get access to create patches. If needed, we could even set up two accounts - one for testers, and one for developers. We had considered something similar earlier, but had concerns over being banned due to account sharing. The Family Sharing seems to make this vision now possible.