Report: Game Sharing Coming to Steam

[Shawn Zipay]

Tucked away in some of the files of the latest Steam beta client is a lovely mention of what looks to be upcoming functionality to share Steam games with others.

The following dialog can be found in your Steam/Public/steamui_english file if you are running the latest beta update for the client.

"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title" "Shared game library"
"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerT ext" "Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it's time to quit."
"SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerTe xt" "This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library."

Again, Valve hasn't announced anything for this yet. There is no saying if this will apply to every game on Steam or just for games that publishers say it's okay to do this for. There are a lot of details still up in the air here and it's certainly a possibility that this may never even see the light of day.

(via NeoGAF)

[SgtMattBaker]

If true, Wasn't this one of MS' big features for the One?
I remember Major Nelson saying "Steam can't do stuff like this" .... lol

[jimykx]

Steam took really seriously what was said in this interview:

AT around 8:35
TROLOLOL

[Anarchy1]

Wasn't he just talking about how you can share your games with anyone who uses your console?

I mean, you can do the same thing for Steam, they just don't get their own account.

[jimykx]

No, He talked about sharing games through the family thing, where certain accounts are connected and all these accounts share the same game. They can be on different Xboxes on different places.

[Thortok2000]

I figured something like this would happen. Steam may even get this feature out before the new xbox. =P

[cikame]

I always imagine this stuff is just developers testing the possibility of new functions to see if it works, even if there is no intention of adding them.

[Anarchy1]

No, He talked about sharing games through the family thing, where certain accounts are connected and all these accounts share the same game. They can be on different Xboxes on different places.

Not anymore...lol

(This is one of the features being lost by removing all the DRM)

[CptainCrunch]

Im all for it. I have a number of games just sitting there waiting for some friend to enjoy as I did and wont play again.

[DunkinSPE]

Reminds me of back in the old NES Cartridge days. Where you'd loan a friend a game to try. And if it really was a good game you'd get yours back and your friend would buy his own. Unless you had one of those thieving friends. And Shareware....lol

[jimykx]

Well, I do still have a few CD's in here that aren't mine. I mean, they are now