Steam Family Sharing Program Announced, Beta Soon To Follow

Just because the Xbox One temporarily scrapped their intentions for a family plan doesn’t mean that Valve can’t take advantage of the idea. Earlier today the company announced, “Steam Family Sharing.” The program will allow a user to share their library of games with authorized friends and family members, allowing them to play any games the user owns when they aren’t being played by another user themselves. Your library has a share limit of 10 other devices.

There is a Steam Group that you can sign up with in hopes of beta-testing the system in a week’s time. Right now they intend to give out invites to the first thousand who signed up, but you never know if they plan on opening up the floodgates and allowing more people to test down the road, so it can’t hurt to sign up.

Even though Microsoft executives have stated that the family sharing programs they announced at the reveal of the Xbox One may return, “When the time is right,” it is impressive the PC gaming distributor that is Steam was able to swiftly scoop in and provide said service on their platform. There may be some of the same caveats or stipulations (including the DRM of being logged into your account through the internet), but the fact remains that Valve is getting in on the ground floor, with the console companies playing catch up.