Steam Family Sharing

Does it say anywhere what would happen if, for example, my brother is playing a game on my account at work at his house. I come home from work and want to play a game, will it deny me access, or just kick him off mid game?
 
Read the OP maybe?

"If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."
 
qotsa said:
I can understand not having 2 people playing the same game, but not being able to play any game in my library because someone else is playing 1?

Completely lost interest at this point. Oh well, I guess it's moving in the right direction at least.
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End of the day they are looking to create options for families and people in the same household more so than people sharing accounts when they don't live together imo.

If you're on a shared comp you obviously won't be able to play 2 games at once. If you're trying to split it between 2 households, why don't you have your own accounts?

Really don't get why that would be a major issue.
 
Does this also assume that (on the same machine) each separate Steam account/user will also be running as a different Windows user? Because although some games keep their save data in the Steam-Cloud service, or in the steamapps folder, many games still stick a lot of that sort of thing into the %APPDATA% or "My Documents" area, which without changes would see a lot of save content etc. still bundled together...

Couple that with the fact that a large amount of all home Windows users (myself included) will only have the 1 Administrator account which auto-logs in and perhaps don't even realise in some cases that each family member could have their own account... Hmm
 
Evilsod said:
End of the day they are looking to create options for families and people in the same household more so than people sharing accounts when they don't live together imo.

If you're on a shared comp you obviously won't be able to play 2 games at once. If you're trying to split it between 2 households, why don't you have your own accounts?

Really don't get why that would be a major issue.
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Fair point, just that I struggle to think of anyone I know (that uses steam) that only has 1 computer in their house.
 
heres a question. if you join the Steam Family Sharing group to be part of the beta, if your selected surely your friend or family members needs the beta to make this work?
 
gareth170 said:
heres a question. if you join the Steam Family Sharing group to be part of the beta, if your selected surely your friend or family members needs the beta to make this work?
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Well it will apply to the host account, and you can invite (I would assume) anyone to be a 'guest'/'lendee' account - the beta is probably for the 'share my library' portion, rather than the 'borrow your library' bit.
 
qotsa said:
Fair point, just that I struggle to think of anyone I know (that uses steam) that only has 1 computer in their house.
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If they have multiple computers and happen to have the same taste in games then in all likelihood, it is going to be an online MP game that would require separate accounts anyway. If they don't have the same taste in games then why not use separate accounts?
 
You should be able to select which games are playable by others in your household. I'd have no problem letting my sons play games which are appropriate to their age group, but not others.
 
Witcher1979 said:
Read the OP maybe?

"If he decides to start playing when a friend is borrowing one of his games, the friend will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."
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Sorry was at work when I posted and only scanned it. Thank you for pointing out what I had initially skipped over.
 
Parabellum said:
Does this mean to two people can log into the one account at the same time, playing 2 different games at the same time? IF so brilliant... well done Valve.
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Erm, no.

Your library can only accessed by one user at a time.

If someone is playing a game from your library and you sign in on another computer, the other person will be prompted to pack up or buy the game.

It stinks.

They need a system to allow game and not library sharing on the same WAN address.

At present, it is more beneficial for me to just sign in using my account on the other computer in the house. "Sharing" is just a pain in the ***.
 
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Parabellum said:
Does this mean to two people can log into the one account at the same time, playing 2 different games at the same time? IF so brilliant... well done Valve.
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No unfortunately it doesn't (unless they've revised how it works since it was first unveiled)...

Each of the 2 people still logs into their own individual steam account, but not at the same time, on the same machine, and will both be able to access any of the games installed locally on that machine. It's useful for things like single-player games that don't really do separate save slots - instead of letting your kid or little brother or whatever play on your own main save and screw everything up for you they can just log into their own Steam account to play your copy of the game
 
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