Yeah, timezones, that doesn't change what I said. 1 person max using the library, while unlocking games so each 'shared' person can play a game as long as it's not the same game raises that to 5 people concurrently. Missing your point.


It's hardly a hassle, it's a one time setup and with a service as big as Steam will have tutorials/youtube videos on how to do it in no time.

And no, I highly doubt it's easily detectable if done properly and why should Steam have to start another cat and mouse chase trying to stay ahead of whether people are faking a LAN or not, which programmers will be continually working on?

For someone who agrees there's 'so much' abuse of the current system anyway it's baffling to me that you seem to be willing to assume people won't abuse this one.

What, in the terms of lost sales and abuse to the system, is the difference between :-
5 people getting access to free games due to geographical dislocation
or
5 people getting access to free games due to using an easily detectable VPN

Its still the exact same amount of people getting free games.

The library lock isn't a deterrent.

Lets explain how switching a VPN on and off will look to a detecting program

Lets say me and you are going to abuse the system.

Your External IP 66.66.66.66
Your local NIC IP 192.168.0.5
Default gateway 192.168.0.1
Hamachi server IP 25.46.150.5

My External IP 55.55.55.55
My Local IP 192.168.0.6
Default gateway 192.168.0.1

I want to play one of your games. I fire up hamachi and connect to your hamachi server. Suddenly my primary IP becomes 25.46.150.10 and my external IP becomes 66.66.66.66 and my default gateway changes to 25.46.150.5.

Using ad-hoc system like hamachi, there is no way around this.

You only way to make an invisible VPN connection is at router level. There is a permanent connection between our routers. But that means my internet is throttled to your upstream and all my internet traffic goes via your router.

I do see what you are saying about abuse.

If the library lock was an effective solution in stopping abuse, I'd understand not removing it.

But its not stopping abuse. its already happening.

Imagine a castle. You've got a big portcullis to stop people getting in, you also put caltrops in the street to slow invaders.

Except, its the citizens that are mostly effected. An invading army wouldn't really care, they've already broken past the gate.

Removing the library lock makes the free games only slightly more appealing, but only slightly.

I used it in beta when it was better, now it is pretty bad. You can't use your family member's library if he is playing with something.

I only use sharing to access games in my old account's library, to which I previously forgot the password and Valve was kind enough to help me recover. The sharing feature has been very useful in this type of scenario, because the only person I'm sharing with is me.

Oh there are lots or scenarios where its useful, just not the "Dad can I play a game your not playing?" scenario it was reported to be designed for.

I use it and like it. I have a couple of people using my library this way, and we never play games at the same time so we never, ever run across the simultaneous use thing. It's great for trying out some games I don't have (yet).

Its unlikely you will, you don't live conjoined lives with the people you are sharing with. You don't phone your friends up and say "ok! we're having diner at 5pm". Your all living your own lives doing your own thing.

If you're in a family living under one roof, a lot of things happen at the same time, including free time to play games.

This has always been my biggest gripe with SFS. The library Lock has little effect on friends sharing with friends, but it has the highest chances of impact on people living the type of conjoined lives that families do.

We've just took a step back.

Using SFS you can share with 5 other people. What they can't currently do is play at the exact same time.

However due to different factors such as time zone, living different lives and so on those 5 people can get the benefit of free games with it being highly unlikely they will stop each other players playing due to the library lock.

The library lock has not stopped them getting and playing free games. 5 people have still got free games.


So what is the difference between those 5 people getting free games, compared to having a another set of 5 people that are likely to playing at the same time?

Its still 5 people getting free games, its just the first set don't live with each other.

I use it to mutually share with a couple friends, honestly I thought they'd be happy to have access to my rather huge library but they hardly ever try my games so it's been a one sided benefit on my side so far.

If anybody cares, you can't start shared games offline but you can keep playing if you start them online and then go offline. You can't restart the client with the game open though, so either switch the full network off (easy to do for me as I play on a laptop) or otherwise block steam connectivity.