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Steam Families is here
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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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This bit is a bit fucked up:
Not sure I agree, how else are they meant to prevent the ocean of "It wasn't me, it was my brother" excuses from hackers smurfing accounts?
I'd recommend (to everyone) that if you're unsure -or have even the slightest doubt about the person you're going to give access to your Steam account- to politely decline and play it safe.
It is not different from how the previous shared libraries worked. I guess it's there to stop cheaters from buying a single copy of the game and sharing it with throwaway accounts.
I guess it's to prevent creating family members for the purpose of cheating
I think it's a great rule. If you're sharing your library with others, don't be am asshole and cheat. If you do you'll be a disappointment to them too. More social pressure to not cheat is only a positive in my opinion, but also I will never cheat and I only share my library with people I'm confident won't cheat as well. I don't associate with people who want to ruin other's fun. If you do then that's on you. It's your choice to risk getting banned.
It also stops people from buying a game, sharing it to themselves on an alt account and using cheats. Then just spinning up a new alt account at no cost when the first one gets banned.
Steam Families is not just used by families.
Sounds like a great life lesson to be taught by a responsible adult to a 24 year old discovering cheats.
Not sure where you're going with this - I was implying that there are consequences for cheating, like losing access to a game library even if temporary.
Well it'd be just the one game that they cheated in. That's where you can sit the kid down and tell him that cheating has consequences. Ideally this talk would've happened before you share access though - I'm thinking of it as making sure the kid knows how to drive before you let them borrow the keys to your car.
Parents just have to make sure the kid understands to not cheat before sharing the account. It might sound new to us because we never grew up with this scenario, but it seems reasonable to me.
Again, it's just making sure the kid is a safe driver before letting them borrow keys to the family van.
If the ban worries you, you can just not share the games - this is strictly an upside and there's no penalty for maintaining the status quo and not using this feature.
The problem with that statement is that there's a pretty common example that I already brought up that easily disproves it - letting the kid borrow keys to the car after they've shown they can drive safely.
There's a lot more parental liability there than some skins in a game.
And the penalty is losing access to a fucking game, not the death of other people.
Teenage driving proves that they can learn to be responsible enough to be trusted with the lives of others. You're saying they can't learn to be responsible enough with your CS skins?
And I hope your child is trusted enough to drive at some point, because you invested the time and effort to trust them behind the wheel.
I've had my steam account forever, so I might be overlooking something I did early on and forgot about, But I think the problem with anything along the lines of what you're proposing is that they don't have the time or ability to confirm that each steam account does belong to a different individual. This would either result in super intrusive amounts of data collecting, or risk someone saying "oops, look at that, my 15th child just got banned for hacking!" And then adding yet another "family member"?
Where do you draw the line in the above scenario? At least the current policy is clear.
It's much easier to bag on an idea than it is to come up with one, isn't it?
Do you have any proposals that you think would be better?
Humor me here.
My assumption is that steams main goal is to provide paying users with good service by minimizing hackers, and second to that, provide QOL features like family share.
Do you agree with that assumption? If not, what do you think the priorities are?
If you do agree with the assumption, what would you have done differently to accommodate both those priorities and your complaint?
So what if a hacker just makes a new account, and adds that to the family and continues ruining the experience of others?
So your proposed solution would let hackers make indefinite new accounts and add them as family. Do you see a problem with that?
If not, I hope you're done talking to me, lol.
A well thought out and conveyed response to the concern about hackers. Valve should implement your plan pronto.
I mean, someone should get banned from cheating. I can see why this happen though, since the account playing does not own the game the account which has the game linked gets banned instead. If the account cheating has the game they are instead playing on their copy and that gets banned instead (i assume).
However the ban should be linked to the account and not the copy of the game. I do not understand why this isnt the case. Maybe because someone could just make a new account and link that to play on instead, therefor never having to buy more than one copy of the game while cheating.
Yeah, it's most likely to prevent someone from using the family feature to get away with cheating.
As it stands now, if you get caught cheating you must create a new account and repurchase the game. So the main deterrent is the full cost of a game.
With the steam family function you could potentially create 5 new accounts per year, and simply remove them when they get caught cheating. The only deterrent would be the wait period.
So I agree with their decision. The downside is that you must trust someone before adding them to your family. If your cheating son gets you kicked off counterstrike, then just remove him from your family. They're never too old to drop off at the fire station.
This is indeed the appropriate reaction to being banned on counter strike. Joke aside you could just lock the entire functionality of adding an account to your family if someone got caught cheating though.
I'm not sure that would be the best solution. A cheater could still get caught cheating 6 times before requiring a repurchase, and it's still a pretty harsh penalty for someone who didn't cheat. You keep your game, but you can no longer share your library if your family situation changes.
'Sorry, son, you can't play my games on your computer because daddy made a bad decision when he was 21.'
The ultimate solution is probably an online identity when playing any game. Imagine if cheating got you banned from all online games for 5 years.
My question is, when there are 5 people with 5 copies of a multiplayer game in the pool, and the 6th member without a copy gets banned, which of the other 5 members gets banned?
when you play a game that multiple people have, you can choose which copy is being used. The owner of that copy and the one playing get banned
Thanks, that explains it. So there is a pop-up when you try to play a game from the common pool and you have to choose who you are borrowing from?
They send their enforcement squad to all houses involved.
Just hide those games from your shared library and you will be safe