STEAM FAMILY SHARING BETA COMING THIS MONTH. :) blog - Genkisan

7th Blog:

Steam will be getting a new feature called Steam Family Sharing which allows you to grant access to 10 family members and/or friends to your library of Steam games. So far the idea is that only one family member and/or friend can access your library at a time. And you as the lender always have priority to your games. So if you log on and play a game, then anyone else you had authorized to play your games would be be given a notice and then forced to quit the game they were playing after several minutes..

I'm really trying to figure out how that would work. If a relative or friend is playing a game and in the middle of a certain part filled with a lot of action and no place to save for about 10 or so minutes, but I want to play my game, how would I know what they are doing that I may be interrupting? Think about it like an online game; You are in the middle of a boss fight and just when you are close to winning, the game gives you a notice of server maintenance in 3 minutes but you are in an epic fight that could last 10 minutes, then the game loses connection to the internet and you are then thrown back to the title screen left with your eyes bulged and cursing every word you can think of out of frustration. I can see something like that happening here as well.

I think a good idea would be to allow at least 3 devices to be able connect simultaneously and as long as one family member or friend does not play the same game as the other, they would be free to play any game they want at any given time, without the worry of interruption when you, the lender, gets on to play a game. And if that isn't an option, then at least allow the other relative or friend longer timed play of at least an hour, before they are forced to exit the game they are playing, while you enjoy your game as well. That would be awesome!

But for now, what Steam is offering is a start. Maybe in the near future they may implement new things like what I mentioned. Who knows. :)

For more information click on the image below: