Family Sharing coming to Steam

Players can share their collection of games with others

Posted on Sep 11, 2013 - 2:31pm EST

Valve has announced Steam Family Sharing, a new service feature that allows close friends and family members to share their libraries of Steam games. The program will launch in closed beta next week.

Sharing allows others to play your Steam games while each earning their own Steam achievements and storing their own saves and application data to the Steam cloud.

Once a device is authorized, the lender's library of Steam games becomes available for others on the machine to access, download, and play. Though simultaneous usage of an account's library is not allowed, the lender may always access and play his games at any time. A Steam account may authorize Family Sharing on up to 10 devices at a given time.

There will be some limitations to the program. Some Steam games may be unavailable for sharing, for example titles that require an additional third-party key, account, or subscription. A shared library may only be accessed by one user at a time, while the owner may login and start playing at any time - any lender currently using the shared library will be kicked off. Any region restrictions will remain in place when borrowing or lending content.

More information can be found on Valve's official page on the Sharing program.