Last September Valve announced a program allowing family members to share their digital library with one another. The Steam Family Sharing feature brought the ability to share games without the need of a physical disc, something that had been sorely missing from the digitally distributed gaming world.
Steam has been running the Family Sharing Program in a closed beta for the past several months but now it’s all grown up and available to anyone with a Steam account. Now that it’s out of beta anyone can begin sharing their library with up to ten authorized computers.
It’s fairly straightforward to get started, and it won’t take long for family members to be playing your games. Anyone can send a request to access another member’s catalog, and once approved by the owner, they can play almost any title in member’s library. There are some limitations: region restricted titles, games that require third party keys and subscription-based services will be unavailable for sharing. There are also a handful of titles that are not authorized by the developers for Family Sharing but those could change at a future date. And possibly the biggest caveat is that only one person can access the shared account at a time; the title’s owner always gets priority when it comes to playing games.
It’s performed well in beta and now that it’s available to the public we suggest checking it out. Steam Family Sharing is a welcomed change in the world of digital distribution and it may just be the change we’ve needed to shake up the market.
