One of the few good pieces of news to come out of Microsoft's new game usage policies is the fact that Xbox One owners will be able to share their games with up to 10 "family members" (they don't actually have to be members of your family) but it seems Valve is not to be outdone with the possibility that a similar feature may come to Steam, possibly in the near future.
A series of entries in the Steam database read:
- "SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title" "Shared game library"
- "SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText" "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_SharedLicenceLocked_BorrowerText" "This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library."
From these lines of code it seems pretty clear that if Valve do implement the feature you'll be able to give your games to other players but only one person will be able to play the game at any given time. If the 'owner' of the game wants to play then the others will be asked to leave; presumably they'll be given a timer to save and so on rather than just being kicked out immediately.
It's not clear how publishers will react to this policy or if they'll be able to prevent their games from being shared in this way. Of course, just because the code entries have been made in the Steam database doesn't mean Valve intends to implement such a feature.
It seems unlikely that Sony will follow suit given that PS4 owners won't register their games through any central database; of course, the benefit of this is that PS4 can be swapped or traded freely. Publishers can block the online elements of PS4 games, not the games themselves.
Source: NeoGAF.
Via: Kotaku.
