Originally posted by Shmstr:

I wanted to create a family with my friends using the new function, but it tells them that it is impossible because of different countries. Is there a way around this? Their region is Russia and mine is Spain

I would assume you would not be able to because the idea of it is that its meant for a single house. But it could also be to do with licencing issues.

Its not netflix. It doesn't matter if you're IPs are different, so long their in the same country.
Also it helps if your last names match; then you're certain Steam sees you as a 'family'.

but grouping with friends is obviously another way to create a family. I mean best friends tend to care more about eachother than actual family (which you didn't get to choose). Still, being that distant will indeed cause issues with licensing.

The FAQ shows you need to have proven you're family at least. (You trust eachother enough to use eachother's PC and sometimes play on eachother's accounts (under supervision obviously).)

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4

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.
Your account is still on cooldown from being a member of a previous Steam Family.
The Steam Family's member slots are still in cooldown from being occupied by other accounts.


When you try to join a Steam Family, you will be told how much time remains in your cooldown period.

I think 'intended for a household' is a bit of a deceptive. It is, yes, intended for Parents and their Children. However, it's not a restriction. since it works when not living in the same house at least, in the same way Netflix treats this thing.

Steam Families are intended to contain your immediate family. As who you include in your immediate family can change over time due to growing up, marriage or other events, it is understandable that some day you may need to change to a new Steam Family. Adults can leave a family at any time, however, they will need to wait 1 year from when they joined the previous family to create or join a new family.

Children in a Steam Family cannot leave the family themselves and must be removed by an adult in the family or by Steam Support.

As it is rare that a family member leaves the family, each Steam Family slot has a cooldown of one year before a new member can occupy that slot.

You can diffidently add your grandparents to the family and don't need to live in the same house.

Originally posted by Elucidator:

I think household is a bit of a deceptive term here, since its not about living in the same house at least, in the same way Netflix treats it. The other points make that clear. (including the fact that they describe families can change, etc.)
You can diffidently add your grandparents to the family and don't need to live in the same house.

Yup. My Steam Family is 4 people in the same house and 2 who live hundreds of kilometers away from me but still in the same country.
Had no problems adding them to my Steam Family.
BUT, to be fair, that was in march when this entered BETA. Its possible that Steam made it more restrictive since then.
I dont plan on finding out just for fun, i have my Steam Family setup and just leave it alone that way.

Feature is as stupid as rest of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ platform. Epic Games over greedy steam any time

Originally posted by Ogami:

Correct, with the new Steam Family system all members of the family must be from the same country and their Steam store region must also be the same.
Otherwise you cant create/join a Steam Family.
Like already mentioned, this system is meant to share games with your close family in the same household, not friends in other countries.

literally why does it matter, it doesn't effect valve and they just broke an useful feature for no reason

Originally posted by Subwaysurfer322:

Originally posted by Ogami:

Correct, with the new Steam Family system all members of the family must be from the same country and their Steam store region must also be the same.
Otherwise you cant create/join a Steam Family.
Like already mentioned, this system is meant to share games with your close family in the same household, not friends in other countries.

literally why does it matter, it doesn't effect valve and they just broke an useful feature for no reason

It does as it means less game sales if there were not any restriction and people were abusing the previous method by selling spaces in their family share slots.

Now that multiple people can use one accounts games at the same time unlike with the previous version you have to have additional restrictions or it would get even worse and less companies would use steam families.

Stream family is a feature steam offers completely free and they have every right to choose how it works.

I hate that i cannot share this settings with My brothers who live on other houses but same country,this is so stupid @Steam repair that ♥♥♥♥ it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!

Originally posted by Hamael Surk:

I hate that i cannot share this settings with My brothers who live on other houses but same country,this is so stupid @Steam repair that ♥♥♥♥ it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!!

It's what steam wants as the same location is the easiest way to prevent abuse as you can see here:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4

Who can be in a Steam Family?

While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.

To that end, we expect the requirements for participating in a Steam Family to change over time as we monitor its usage and add requirements to keep usage in line with this intent.

Originally posted by CaptainAlen:

Feature is as stupid as rest of this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ platform. Epic Games over greedy steam any time

No it really isn't - you're just not understanding WHY this is the case.

It's because of abuse.

In recent years, some people figured out that certain regions in the world got games at vastly cheaper prices due to their differing economy.

So abusers set up accounts pretending to be there, family shared and bought these games cheaply to use across these accounts.

Obviously this is a breach of service and developers and publishers weren't pleased.

So changes were made. This is a result of this.

Ergo, this is why we can't have nice things.

Originally posted by Ogami:

Correct, with the new Steam Family system all members of the family must be from the same country and their Steam store region must also be the same.
Otherwise you cant create/join a Steam Family.
Like already mentioned, this system is meant to share games with your close family in the same household, not friends in other countries.

What a load of crap.
Seriously, the whole regional lock shouldn't even exist anymore, due to digital destribution. Stupid political/money games played by retted old men horrendously out of touch.

Originally posted by K.V. #RemoveRandomCrits:

Originally posted by Ogami:

Correct, with the new Steam Family system all members of the family must be from the same country and their Steam store region must also be the same.
Otherwise you cant create/join a Steam Family.
Like already mentioned, this system is meant to share games with your close family in the same household, not friends in other countries.

What a load of crap.
Seriously, the whole regional lock shouldn't even exist anymore, due to digital destribution. Stupid political/money games played by retted old men horrendously out of touch.

Sounds like a lot of people who weren't part families caused Valve to change how family sharing worked to make it more aligned with its original intention. Maybe more publishers would be more willing to allow their games to be family shared now that they're not being diluted like they were with the old program.

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Originally posted by K.V. #RemoveRandomCrits:

What a load of crap.
Seriously, the whole regional lock shouldn't even exist anymore, due to digital destribution. Stupid political/money games played by retted old men horrendously out of touch.

Sounds like a lot of people who weren't part families caused Valve to change how family sharing worked to make it more aligned with its original intention. Maybe more publishers would be more willing to allow their games to be family shared now that they're not being diluted like they were with the old program.

That's a fair point.

Some people seem to forget that Valve have a MASSIVE wealth of data available at their fingertips and don't make decisions lightly. They would most likely have substantial evidence of such abuse to back this up.

And if they can show the changes to publishers, this might actually be a welcome thing for the genuine users. Maybe more will come across to it.

So you're telling me that spouses can't live in different countries? My fiancée and I currently share games and now we won't be able to until I get to move closer to her which with how the world is going right now, won't be for a long while. This family sharing features sucks ass.

Originally posted by ZonkedOutZombie:

So you're telling me that spouses can't live in different countries? My fiancée and I currently share games and now we won't be able to until I get to move closer to her which with how the world is going right now, won't be for a long while. This family sharing features sucks ass.

Spouses can live in different countries, however to family share the accounts need to be in the same country.

With the new steam family sharing system the family part has been cut out while only localizing the family space selling abuse. If they wanted to fix people selling family space they could've added a stipulation like "being friends for a year before you can add them" to make it unprofitable to abuse it, instead they've stopped actual family members from sharing their games based on living situation so family has nothing to do with it, without actually fixing the scamming issues. Plus it says it's based on purchase history which people have reported isn't the case in many situations, and that it's specific to households which is also inconsistent, some people in the same household can't share while some can share with people hundreds of miles away. The system isn't functional and even if it were functioning as intended all it would do is alienate people who can't manage to all live in the same place IE the people that would find the most value in this feature. It went from something that helps connect families to something that enforces one strict vision of a family and then fails to even execute on that flawed design.
The idea is bad, the execution is bad and it fixed nothing while breaking lots.