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while it has a few key perks that have people excited, the new Steam Families game-sharing feature is much more specific, and thus restrictive, as to what constitutes a "Family," isn't it?

whereas before you could share your library with whatever five people you liked enough, the new system only lets you inter-share your games with a single group of five other people who are all sharing with each other, too. basically, what had been diverse Steam "polycules" will now be broken up into insular, disconnected islands.

library sharing that previously looked like a wildly flowering node map is now curtailed to small nuclear-style hubs of no more than six points. moving between these groups is discouraged via harsh 365-day cooldowns that begin the day you join a Family. while you can leave the current Family at any time, until that ticks down you cannot join another. (the old system let you change whom you granted access as desired.) and of course, you can only be in one Family at any given time.

this is quite a winnowing down of sharing possibilities, in my opinion. i am sure this new lack of flexibility regarding who you share with (and when) meets Valve's business objectives better than the old, more open-ended system. Valve also states that it may restrict family membership requirements further in the future:

While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.

To that end, as we monitor the usage of this feature, we may adjust the requirements for participating in a Steam Family or the number of members over time to keep usage in line with this intent.

perhaps a more academy oriented person can channel this coming change into commentary on queer vs. normative notions of family, which is sort of what's tickling my brain here. i see that most people seem happy about this change because only locking up a game being shared has less friction than locking up an entire shared library. but to enjoy that benefit you have to lock yourself into a much more fixed definition of "family" and who you're allowed to share with, and so far that is just not sitting 100% well with me.

edit: an additional restriction that is causing a lot of friction on the Steam Families forum is that all members of a Steam Family must be residing in the same country. as some posters are pointing out that is very restrictive and just does not accommodate the circumstances of many modern families. (there is also some concern that Valve is ultimately angling to define a "Family" as people living under the same roof, but i think that is mostly speculation so far.)


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in reply to @wave's post:

I'm with you on this one. I thought Steam's model of "a family is anyone who will log in with their account on your computer" was really good compared to the "a family is up to six people including a couple of parents who share everything" model of other software companies. Steam really said that family is whoever you mutually trust, and I thought that was worth something. I mean the implementation kind of sucked because only one of you being able to use games at a time was annoying and it kept requiring me to log in again on random intervals, but I loved the theory behind it.

I agree with you in theory, but in practice this is a huge improvement for me. I gave my fiance my old steam deck when I got the OLED, but she owns like 3 games to my 1000+. The old family sharing meant we couldn't hang out and both play different games at the same time.

Yeah, I really hate that they added a really good change(having sharing locking just the game(s) being used instead of the whole library) with a horridly bad one in making sharing way more restrictive into who you can share with, if you have two friends who you'd trust with your life but they never met each other you can't share games with both of them without locking them out of whoever they trust, I really hate that

And like, the region locking is even worse, I "get" that it's "so people can't exploit the system by having the person with the cheapest region buy the games for everyone else to play" but even if we're going to go and lock it so it's just for "close family", I have siblings who live out of country or spend a significantly amount of time out of country, it's locking them out of being part of my family, and I don't like that they're saying that somehow my siblings don't count as close family anymore just cuz we don't live in the same country anymore

word

i want to see more people talking about how (as you put it) sharing is way more restrictive and how this is very much a mixed bag. it's hard to imagine Valve changing the new system now that it's revealed, but maybe...

the entire thing, aside from the obvious commercial implications, really feels like "you're only permitted to share your games with your cisheteronormative family". my polycule is the closest thing to a family that i have and all of us being in a different country really feels like a slap in the face with this. guess it's back to pirating stuff where possible :|

ah that sucks. easy to see how you will feel left out under this new system. :/

i'm not involved in any romantic stuff right now so i may join a circle of local friends if that becomes a thing. but i don't really fit into the type of familial organization that Valve is advocating for here either. feel kinda outside-looking-in at the (yes, often cishetnorm) people who will find this new system a comfortable fit.

I feel like this is meant to curtail shared library "pirating" that occurs in countries with lower purchasing power. That might explain why it's region locked, and it's possible a big publisher was breathing down their neck about family sharing, and this was their solution.

Enforcing heteronormative ideas of what a family is could be an ulterior motive, but it could just be Valve's leadership being completely oblivious again.

Very true, it's not unusual for people to have family living in another country, whether they're blood relatives or part of a queer collective or polycule. That's what tells me this is Valve being oblivious or kowtowing to corporate interests, ramifications be damned.

Edit: Apologies if this comes off as dismissive of what others are saying. I'm just tired and not 100% sure how to communicate my point. :X