Valve today announced Steam Family Sharing, a service that makes it possible for Steam users to share their digital games with a maximum of 10 other Steam users. The beta of the service is scheduled for half September this year and will first allow 1000 users to signup. Subscribing to the beta can be done by becoming a member of the Steam Family Sharing Group which currently has more than 100,000 members.
The system is a Digital Right Management (DRM) variant and seems to be comparable with a by Microsoft announced, but later skipped, feature for games on the Xbox One.
Steam users can assign a maximum of 10 other computer that run Steam to use the shared games library. When shared, the owners of these computers are able to play the games that are part of that library. Besides the 10 computer restriction there are other restrictions.
Only one user at the same time can play a game from the library, it's not possible for two users to play a different game from the same library. In case the owner of the collection wants to play a game from his library, the other player receives a warning that his access will soon be revoked. The user then receives the option to buy the game for his own collection.
If the shared game collection is in use by the owner then the sharing feature is not available anyway. Only games available through Steam that don't require a third party license key will be usable with the service. Downloadable Content (DLC) purchased with a Steam license is available on the other computers too.
However users are unable to purchase additional DLC if they don't own the game themselves. The system also makes it possible to remove access to the collection for users who cheat. Also current region restrictions continue to apply.
