Family Subscription

[Scared]

Originally Posted by kilthas

The way it impacts me (and my family), to twist your example a touch, is that I've already purchased three cars, but between my wife, teenager, and I, we're only allowed to have the keys to one at a time, while the other two vehicles are forced to remain idle.

If you had bought 3 cars (games) you would have gotten 3 pairs of keys (cd keys)

[Uplinkpro]

I deff see a need for a system like this. My idea would be that you could have a Primary account and assign sub accounts that could play games from the primary account as long as they are not in use. For instance im just coming back to pc gaming from ps3. I currently have 3 ps3's and a little over 200 games now if i want to play uncharted and my brother wants to play rage we can. However with steam if i want to play Skyrim and He Wants to play rage we cant. Thats a bit to restrictive. The inevitable (but this would create blah game sharing blah piracy issues) well lock it to IPs and use the gametime tracker to show when one game is in use. Limit it so that you have a maximum of 2 IPs and 4 users on the Prime account at once. Im Not asking for free copys of games im asking to beable to use my games on any pc in my home at any time.

[GalakFyarr]

I agree with the above statement.

Buying physical discs:
I buy Game A and Game B. I install both games on 2 different computers (1 & 2).

I can play Game A on Computer 1, while my brother/sister/mother/father/burglar/cat/dog/[insert name here] plays Game B on Computer 2.

I don't see any reason why Steam can't do the same thing.

Buying games through steam should be more of "buying virtual discs", and thus should let us login on multiple computers on the same network, and let us play different games.

Put a limit on x computers per account to prevent possible abuse.

[ozgeek]

hmm. going to be a very messy situation for support and users. The current 1 account = 1 user is better because remember third party devs and publishers says only one licence for one account. If you want to have another copy, buy it. Why should they provide you another key just because you have a brother or sister who play the game ? buy another copy and you won't have any issues? hey?

It's the "I want it" generation now isn't it?

[masterchef341]

Originally Posted by ozgeek

hmm. going to be a very messy situation for support and users. The current 1 account = 1 user is better because remember third party devs and publishers says only one licence for one account. If you want to have another copy, buy it. Why should they provide you another key just because you have a brother or sister who play the game ? buy another copy and you won't have any issues? hey?

It's the "I want it" generation now isn't it?

It's still one license per account, at least for the simple case. I'm not sure about any of the subscription stuff or buying extra copies of the same game for one account, however:

If Person 1 is playing Game A on an account, there is no licensing reason to prevent Person 2 from playing Game B on the same account, especially if they are in the same physical location.

Or what if person 1 wants to play Game A and Game B at the same time?

The whole car analogy doesn't work. It's not buying one car and wanting to drive 3 cars on the weekend. Steam accounts are free. You buy individual games. If we buy Game A and Game B, we should be able to play them both at the same time on separate computers. Every other medium of game-purchasing allows for this behavior.

[GalakFyarr]

Originally Posted by ozgeek

hmm. going to be a very messy situation for support and users. The current 1 account = 1 user is better because remember third party devs and publishers says only one licence for one account. If you want to have another copy, buy it. Why should they provide you another key just because you have a brother or sister who play the game ? buy another copy and you won't have any issues? hey?

It's the "I want it" generation now isn't it?

They don't have to give me another key for my brother/sister, please read and understand what I said.

But this is as if I've bought 2 games, and I'm forced to get a special "Steam Safe" where I have to put all my games in, and I can only withdraw 1 game at the time.

So talk about CD keys all you want, but if I bought 2 physical discs (of 2 different games), I can play 1 game on computer A, while my brother plays the other on computer B.

[-=ShockTrooper=]

Originally Posted by CTRL ALT DEL !

So you want to buy 1 car and drive 3 on the weekend. Contact you local ford dealer and see if they have this option.

I have several sets of keys for my car. I think that's a Bad analogy.


Good idea, but it could get kind of confusing proving who's family and preventing groups of friends from going in on an account

[GalakFyarr]

Originally Posted by -=ShockTrooper=

I have several sets of keys for my car. I think that's a Bad analogy.


Good idea, but it could get kind of confusing proving who's family and preventing groups of friends from going in on an account

not if you restrict it to one network, with mandatory authentication (with Steam Guard) when you leave that network, and with a 5 computer limit per account.

[Snargleplax]

The lack of this option is infuriating to me. Another member of my household should be allowed to play one game while I play another on a different computer. I own licenses to both, and there is no simultaneous use of a single game. It's obnoxious.

[IRA625]

http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2286985

[doainoba]

Originally Posted by CTRL ALT DEL !

So you want to buy 1 car and drive 3 on the weekend. Contact you local ford dealer and see if they have this option.

What a completely, utterly invalid analogy.

Here's one that's right on the money:

I have a game closet, and in that closet I have a Monopoly game, a Battleship game, and Clue. If I am playing Battleship, and my daughter wants to play Clue with her friends, and my son wants to play Monopoly with his friends, all three of us should be able to play those games.

[rabcor]

seconded, but i really think that it should be much more simple...

You con log into a steam account on as many computers as u want simlutaneously but the chat system will only be functional on one of these (which you can choose by pressing a button that makes chat active on this computer requiring password entry)

But you cannot play a game that is already being played on another computer, you can however play any of the other games, why? its been paid for if its a copy thats not being used why not allow it to be used by a family member or friend?

Ok i can see how this could lead to some loss of profit for single player games in particular since one friend buys the single player game and after he finishes allows his other friends to take turns playing it. Don't worry i have a solution for this too.

Ip address restrictions

You can log in to the account simultaneously accross as many ip addresses as you want. But you can only play games from one IP address. this way you cannot take this function outside your own house, on top of this OP's idea to allow people to buy an extra license so extra copies of the game can be running simultaneously would be great!

[Captain Morti]

/agree

[jadyarewar]

I would like this option too.

The reality is people share games. They shared them before digital media existed, and will continue to do so today.

If I purchase a physical CD of a game, whether it's PC or PS3 or XBOX, anyone in my household (and anyone I choose to hand the disc over) is able to play it. The only condition is that multiple people cannot be playing it at the same time.

[SirDrexl]

Originally Posted by boycie

What I'd like to see is the ability to have different profiles for different family members using the same Steam account. Purely as a way of organizing save files.

My son has just managed to delete my Portal 2 save. If he had his own profile and I had mine it would have been much less likely.

Some steam games like Dawn of War already have this facility, it would be nice to make it a common feature of Steam rather than up to individual developers.

I know this is a really old post, but I wanted to respond.

The way to handle this is to create different user accounts on the computer itself (within Windows). This is how games decide where to put the save files; when you're logged in as User A, any game saves will be placed under User A's folders. When User B logs in, game saves will be placed under User B's folders. The ability to separate the files of different users is why there are separate user folders in the first place, and why games (usually) don't just save to a folder where the game is installed. Many other applications besides games work the same way.

I don't think there's anything Steam could do to change this behavior.