19 points

This bit is a bit fucked up:

What happens if my brother gets banned for cheating while playing my game?

If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.

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11 points

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.

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1 point
*
Removed by mod
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1 point

Steam Families is not just used by families.

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1 point

Sounds like a great life lesson to be taught by a responsible adult to a 24 year old discovering cheats.

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3 points
*

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.

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18 points

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.

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-3 points
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That sort of behaviour should be easy to track if it happens more than once though

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2 points

Being able to evade a ban once is already a problem. Now you need to ban every cheater twice to really ban them.

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10 points

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.

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11 points

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.

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3 points

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.

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47 points

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.

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-10 points
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They should know the account it is that’s currently using it. They’re not using your account when playing your games

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20 points
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Bro you can just make a fake account and say it was your little brother , they literally have no idea who signed up or if they lied about account details 🙄

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18 points

Unless I’ve misunderstood; that’s exactly why I asked the question in my original comment. I’ll explain my / the reasoning:

I own a game on a Steam account (A) and want to hack (and evade bans) using another Steam account (B).

I share my library/game from account (A) to account (B) then hack on account B and only account B gets banned… What’s to then stop me from making Steam account C, D, E, F… etc? Absolutely nothing. Hence the double ban.

I stress that if you do share a game / your Steam library with others you trust them explicitly.

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2 points

Just hide those games from your shared library and you will be safe

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6 points

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?

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0 points

Best guess? Whichever account gave account 6 permission to play their game.

Either account 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 will be the user that gives 6 the permission to play their game, so it follows they’re the one that (I’m assuming) will get banned also. It’s a good question you raise and I’d be interested to know for sure myself.

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1 point

Nobody is giving anybody permission any more than anyone else though. Account 6 creates a family and 5 accounts with a game join the family. There are now 5 copies of the game in the family pool. Account 6 can play and get banned. In this situation nobody even invited account 6 to the family.

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3 points

They send their enforcement squad to all houses involved.

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3 points

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

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1 point

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?

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15 points

I guess it’s to prevent creating family members for the purpose of cheating

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1 point

What is this. Because I’m pretty upset that the games I paid for can’t be played on different pc’s. My daughter wants to pay stardew valley while I’m online with family on satisfactory. I have to take the other pc and go into offline mode. This wasn’t the solution. Even with adding members I didn’t think I did it right. So does this fix it? Can my family member log into stardew online with her cousin while I’m on another lan game?

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17 points
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Yes, you can play Satisfactory while she is playing Stardew Valley, while both of you are online. You now have a number of copies of each game in the family. If 2 members own the same game, then two different members in the family can play both copies at the same time

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3 points

Perfect. Finally. I understand needing two copies of the game to play online (one game code per user). But local split screen shouldn’t be that way and neither should playing seperate games force me into individual play sessions. Each game code should have capacity to run an individual account. Not one account to each owned game.

This has been my gripe with steam and purchased digital games vs physical games since it’s concept. It felt like I was renting play sessions with my ID license rather than owning the games I paid for.

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-2 points

*are

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6 points
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Well they already were, but the Team Families system IS here indeed.

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-1 points

lol I know it just hurt my brain reading “families is”

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5 points

Rip my shared library with gf living in NO and me in NL :(

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1 point

How does this effect that?

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6 points

My guess is this, which is way at the bottom of the support FAQ page (which can be found at the bottom of the posted FAQ section):

“I cannot join a Steam Family”

If you cannot join a Steam Family, it is likely for one of three reasons:

  • Your account activity does not show that you are part of the same household as the existing members.
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2 points

I cannot invite my gf to the Families, while we could do Library share before just fine.

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1 point

Just sign in with her account on your pc, invite her and then you can sign out. I had the same problem.

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6 points

I have three sons, they live in the West Coast, I live in the Midwest. I can’t join a family with them. That’s a bummer.

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7 points

Why not? My Steam Family is just a group of friends spread out all across the country. Geographic distance shouldn’t be an issue.

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3 points
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I don’t really know how it works but according to a lot of other people here it doesn’t work unless you are in the same region. This isn’t the only person here saying they can’t use it because they don’t live near their family.

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1 point

They’re doing IP location checks, and they’re doing them badly (there’s not really a way to do them well). It’s not working for me with people in the same town, and other people are reporting it’s randomly working or not working with locations in the same neighborhood.

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6 points

Why can’t you?

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1 point

I get a big red banner saying sorry, according to your usage patterns you are not in the same family.

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2 points

Most of what I’m reading online talks about an error complaining about region, in which case you’d want to make sure you’re in the same store region.

Other main suggestion is signing into your steam account on their computer. You could probably use something like Microsoft quick assist (which should already be installed iirc) for that

Good luck, if you get a different error or run into other problems please let me know!

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