Valve Launches Steam Family Sharing

The family that games together…stays together? Have fun together? Engage in massive competition against each other, for sure. If your household is into gaming, and you use Steam heavily, then you will be happy to know that Valve is launching family sharing for the platform.

Sharing is always a good thing, especially when it comes to gaming and accounts, and Valve’s Steam Family Sharing is certainly going to make a lot of people happy. With the capability of sharing game libraries with other accounts on up to 10 devices, there is a lot to look forward to.

If, for example, you share a gaming computer at home, you can also benefit from Steam Family Sharing. Using that authorized computer, individual members of the family can play their games all the while making sure that the game saves and achievements are attributed to the proper account – all thanks to the Steam cloud.

Now, if you have a tendency to snoop, and you see that someone in the family has already downloaded a game that you want to play, you can also request access via Steam Family Sharing. All that family member has to do is to authorize your computer to gain access to the game in question.

There are limitations worth taking note of, though. One, not all Steam games will be available for sharing. Two, rather obviously, only one person can play a shared game at a time. If a game is currently in use on another computer, and you want to play, the borrower will be given time to quit the game.

Right now, Steam Family Sharing is still not out, but in the very near future (they say mid-September, though we’re slightly past that point), Valve will start the private beta. There’s no need for me to point out that you should (try to) sign up for that beta NOW, is there?

[Image via ars technica]