this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2024
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If you own games ABC, and you share them with family. Each one of your family members could be running game a, and then game b, and game c at the same time! The only limitation is multiple people can't play the same game at the same time. So your entire library is available for concurrent usage.
The old classic version of steam sharing simply meant that only one person could play at a time, regardless of which game they were playing
And to play two copies of the same game at the same time, any 2 members of the family could own it. So my brother and I can each buy a game, and then my mom and sister could play it while we are at work. My sister can't work, so she has a lot of time to fill but can't afford to buy games. We do have 5 copies of Stardew Valley, though, as that is a game for the whole family.
There was already a bunch of games my brother and I both owned before steam family was an option. But now games I'm only tangentially interested in after he played them or vice versa are much more of an option to quickly play through to see if I like it too. Before, it just wouldn't have been worth buying it to find out. And it's a bonus for the devs too if I do end up liking it, because then I am more likely to buy their next game so I can play it at the same time as my brother.
Gaming is inherently social. Even when we play single-player games, I'm sure most of us have a friend or sibling we talk to about them as we play.
Admittedly, that's pretty good... but useless to families that live far from each. It's difficult for those families to not feel robbed while everyone else now gets an even better experience.
Use routers that support site-to-site VPNs, that way any additional households connect to the main household, and everyone’s IP address looks like it’s coming from the same, singular household.
Note that I have no idea how the Steam client is verifying location. If they send out ARP probes and cut access if they can’t detect the other device running Steam on the same layer 2 network this probably won’t work. People use segmented subnets and vlans in their home networks though, so i would assume that it’s just a public IP thing.