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Comment by Raphmedia | Hacker News Reader

"Can a friend and I share a library and both play at the same time? No, a shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time."

So, if one of my friend play on my game, I can play none of my games? Or am I reading this wrong?

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"As the lender, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when a friend is already playing one of your games, he/she will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."

So I can authorise a person to use my account. I can then, at any time, play my own games. But if that other person is playing a game it will kick them off.

I am really excited about this feature. Around the time Portal 2 came out my partner and I lamented the fact that we had to buy two copies if we each wanted to play on our own account, considering how account sharing is against the TOS. I'm sure the people who do account share to get around this will be very happy to know that they don't have to go over and log in their significant other whenever they wish to play a game the other owns.

But note that this still doesn't allow you and a friend to play a game with each other unless you both own a copy.

Which is a pretty reasonable restriction. If you're going to both get the simultaneous value out of a game, you should probably both pay for it.

I'm kind of surprised that game companies now expect you to pay for a game twice to play through a two-player co-op campaign. Remember when local multiplayer was a thing? When you'd buy a game, and several people would sit around a TV getting "simultaneous value out of it" for the cost of that one purchase, because that was the game's value proposition to begin with?

I don't think it is a reasonable restriction at all. Besides the most devoted fans, I don't believe many families would purchase multiple licenses to a lot of games just to be able to play them simultaneously. These kinds of terms don't really increase revenue but they unnecessarily damage the experience at the same time. This is exactly the sort of stuff that makes pirating more convenient. As I've mentioned in another comment, the Mac and iOS App Stores don't really have these limitations.

What do you suggest then, Valve should give you unlimited copies of the game when you purchase one?

Valve are not giving away a single copy of anything, they are licensing intellectual property with specific terms. I'm advocating licensing terms that allow licensees to simultaneously install and use licensed items on all computers owned by them. The terms of the Mac App Store already allow this.

This isn't something that's on Valve, but games should bring back LAN play.

Well, consider offline mode-- you share your own library with a friend, then go into offline mode. Potentially, your friend can play any game he or she wants from your library, and you still are able to play single player (or non-Steam multiplayer) games yourself.

That's assuming sharing doesn't handle this case. I'm guessing Valve has thought about things like this.

Well, they essentially have to allow it-- especially in the case you disconnect from the internet entirely. There's always a way around it, and offline mode is likely going to be allowed.

You're probably right. I just have the sense that their engineers though this through far more than anyone here.

I am trying to imagine some Valve engineer hits his head to wall and saying "Damn, we forgot about the offline mode"

"Can I share specific games, or do I have to share my whole library? Libraries are shared and borrowed in their entirety."

Looks like you're right. It's one less step than just giving someone your username and password.

The way I read it, basically yes. Except if you're the owner of the games being shared you get priority and the person you shared to will get kicked off in a few minutes if they are playing one of the games in the shared library:

"When I authorize a device to lend my library to others, do I limit my own ability to access and play my games? As the lender, you may always access and play your games at any time. If you decide to start playing when a friend is already playing one of your games, he/she will be given a few minutes to either purchase the game or quit playing."

I really wish they would fix this. Why should I not be able to have two separate games of mine running at once?

Because otherwise you could co-ordinate which games to buy with your friends so you can all share a single game library for single player games.

So, just like physical titles.

Yeah, which I'm thinking is what they want to avoid.

I think an element of this is the part where when you get kicked off it will prompt you to buy the game or quit. As a nice solution to lack of demos most games have. That's the thought my friends and I immediately jumped to.

Except that with physical titles it's pretty inconvenient to pass around disks all the time, so there's a natural limit to sharing. With the new kind of sharing, you could share your library with someone on the other side of the country without having to ship disks around. That is a subtle point lost in this debate and the debate around the Xbox One.

If multiple users could be playing your game, you could also avoid all buying the same game for multiplayer. That seems reasonable for them to want to avoid.

I think the request is that one person plays Game A while the other plays Game B, not two people playing Game A.

Until someone gets your account banned.

There's probably some kind of "social network graph" hack that could be applied. Like you could share any game from a family member... but only one singular family member, and you can only change your singular family member "link" on the 1st of January or perhaps the anniversary of when you signed up with Steam. That seems fair.

So my HTPC and my kids desktops can each sign up to share Dad's personal library... but they're both stuck to me, and me only, for a year. In a way I kind of like the idea of my kids not being able to "borrow" some ridiculous 17+ rated gorefest from the other side of the internet or a kid at school... I know they're stuck on my account, or at least I have a vague idea what they're doing.

How would you enforce people not creating accounts merely to share one dudes library? Could make it terribly slow or inconvenient perhaps?

Another interesting option is creating tiered accounts to prevent widespread pirating-type operations. So you can either be a sharer or a borrower and never switch between. Or as per above, switch as many times as you want, once per year.

I'm sure there's some moronic and expensive patents out there to prevent the whole thing from ever getting off the ground.

Well, you can't create an account for the sole purpose of being the borrower without buying at least 1 game on Steam, because you can't add a friend without making a purchase.

Create a new steam account for every game you buy, have each account share it's library with all of your friends.

How/why do you play on two computers at once? Seems difficult.

Purchase all my games on steam. Son/daugher/parents/cousin wants to play a game I own, but I am currently playing a different game I own. Only one person can play a game at a time, even though licenses have been purchased for both.

if you had the foresight, you could potentially just created 1 steam account per game purchase. This, in fact, solves all problems related to steam that i have.

Sounds like it. The whole library is on one machine at a time.

You could do this before by logging into Steam from a buddy's computer... but that's got risks associated with it.

This just lets you loan out your whole library without risking your steam account.

Yes this seems to be true, it's in essence providing users a easy approved way to share their steam logins, which happens a lot already.

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