isnt family husband+wife+children + grandpas and grandmas optional?
anything else is not a family

Family sharing is *NOT* available on GOG because it is DRM FREE games so 'sharing' would mean 'distribution' of your purchases. (which is illegal !!!)
But you can actually share the games with friends and family . It's easy install the games on your computer and invite your friend or your family member to use your computer while you do other stuff like gardening or repairing your car or baking bread or making food for your friends to eat. That way they can try the games and then go buy them themselves when they tried them. After all getting people to buy the games themselves is what Steam wants you to do too ! Only at Steam the games is not yours , Steam is a service that allows you to use the service to download and install the games and should Steam ever go away (god forbid) then you will have nothing where as with GOG you will still have your downloads (IF freaking GOG would give us our better download opportunities back )

Except that you underestimate the degree of sharing that the family aspect entails, at least for immediate family.

In the case of a spouse, you mostly function as a single unit. You're essentially throwing your lot in with that person. In the case of a divorce, this is why they are entitled to a piece of what you own by default in most places.

In the case of dependant children, until they can work, they have practically nothing, except what you provide them and until they move out, they also share at a very deep level in what you own.

There is a boundary of ownership with other people that would just feel extremely weird to apply to your immediate family, unless you are in some way dysfunctional or estranged.

Otherwise, with friends and extended family, I agree with your assessment.

First of all, apologize for reviving the thread, but better continue here than start a another new one.


TL;DR jump to the end, but don't make argument if you haven't read the whole post!

I find it odd that people are so against about the normal social behavior of sharing stuff they have with family and friends (and I mean literally the word "Friends" in its true form, actual friends and not those who are just buddies, schoolmates or acquaintance or some online people you know).

Here the law is exactly based to that natural social behavior. First of all, the law is the only thing that matters, nothing that EULA dictates is not valid. If you want to sell your products in the country, you need to obey the law. You can't say that foreign country laws applies. This even Microsoft and Adobe found to be unbreakable by trying to dictate own idea of the licensing.

The law allows a person to share any digital content, movie, music, game or even software, to their family members and close friends as personal use. The law has been enforced by the High Court such way that consumer can produce few copies of the product for personal use. The few copies has been decided to be <= 10 copies. The original copy of the product needs to be maintained, and if the original is destroyed, sold or lost, all the copies needs to be destroyed. So as long the original copy is in the storage, copies can be used. Copies are not allowed to be copied, sold, rented or loaned to anyone else. In other words, not distributed by any means to anyone else than the individual that copy was made for. So example, A can't buy a music CD and make a copy to best friend, that will then give it to his daughter.

The public library system works same way. Any citizen is allowed to use public libraries free, and they can lend material from the public library, and produce a copy of the work for own private use. That copy is not allowed to be distributed forward or to be used by anyone else than that individual, so not even other family members. And it can't be used in any commercial application, than for education purposes (like part of the school work in studies). So example a 15 years old can have a school assignment to do a presentation of subject, he goes to public library and lend few books and video of the topic and use that material to do a own presentation of the subject and then show that presentation in school to all schoolmates. That is why public libraries pay higher prices for every material they buy because the money goes to original authors and producers to compensate for plausible personal use copies.
Teachers are allowed to use all materials for their education purposes, that is why the government pays as well the fee for all the published material in the country for producers as expense for education.

The law allows example two kids to go to store, buy a music/movie/game by splitting the price together. So example 50 € game is for each one as 25 €. They are allowed to make a copy of that game to other one, where other one keeps the original game.
They are not required to live in the same household, or same neighborhood, they can be in opposite sides of the city or county. The other can even move to opposite side of the country, and it doesn't matter. The other can even move to another country if they so want, but now they need to check that country laws of possession of the copied products. So likelihood is that they need to destroy the made copy (nothing further in that).

By the law, it is seen that restricting a natural social behavior for commercial greed is illegal. Meaning that if someone buy a music album as CD, they can't be required to buy that music as well as MP3 to get it to be playing in their smartphone or their car stereo without CD player. They are allowed to copy that music, by making conversion of that music to all their devices and places, as long it stays in that accepted number of copies. Usually it is just 3-5 at best. Like original stay at family living room next to CD player, and copies made to car, to smartphone, to wife and one of the children (not all have same music taste). So now there is original + 4 copies. Requiring that the household would buy 5 units of that music is ridiculous thinking. Because it is already same as requiring others to move away from the space where they can hear the music played. Like they can't enjoy from the same music without everyone paying to it.
Same thing is with the movies, games, books etc.

The house holds can have multiple devices to play the music, why multiple copies are allowed to be made for normal purposes. Different formats can be required, like was it a Compact Casette, VHS casette, CD/DVD disk or MP3 file, it doesn't matter as one of the devices might require different type. So requiring someone to buy multiple copies that they can play something in their own devices is as well ridiculous.
The same is applied for the movies, games etc.

And anyone is expected to be a honest, lawful person. Until otherwise proven by the law.
The internet is understandable a problematic, easy distribution. But not different from making copies and selling to people in school, or on black market corner of the street. It is damaging the industry when it is done illegally, but the method itself is not penalized, the intent of action is. As otherwise everyone is criminal if they rip their music CD to MP3 to listen it on their smartphone. Or if they copy the file from PC to smartphone to listen it while jogging. Copies are made!

The natural social behavior is that family share stuff. Be it a shovel or a car or a household etc. They share stuff. Not everyone is required to buy a own refrigerator just so that manufacturer can sell more.
Father doesn't need to buy multiple shovels so he can ask son to help in digging.
Driving license is not bind to specific car registration and no one else can drive that car in family than the one who is registered owner.

And coming from that, a normal social behavior is that family play together games. In the 80-90's it was expensive to own a PC, so you usually had just one in household. So everyone was required to sit next to each others to play something. There was no internet use as we use it now, so no online games (well, there was the mainframe games like Rogue and Nethack etc that we played over modem), or should be said that no multiplayer games. But back then in the 70-80's almost all software was Open Source, people wrote programs, they shared them, they copied etc. The technology advanced rapidly because that social normal sharing. Until the Closed Source with copyright fears and greediness reached their hand and gasped the industry hard. (Why Copyleft is still fighting back and successfully have done so.)

And when you have multiple children in the family (usual target group in the gaming industry!), each has today their own electronic devices to play the game. And it is already wrong to restrict the parents to buy each one a own copy so they can play:

- Together
- Same time on different devices

Example of competitor of GOG, the Steam does not have a "Family Sharing" as name suggest.
Because you can not share the game with a family member, but you share the whole library, and that whole library is locked to one machine at time, and the account owner is priority (shuts off all other games) and all PC's that are using the shared library are required to stay Online all the time.

So it doesn't work as a normal family sharing where you would buy a different games (example 4-5 different games) and then brothers would be playing in their own rooms the same game at their profile (single player).
It doesn't even work in a normal way that one children play game A, and other play game B at the same time.
It simply does not allow both children to play at the same time. As for name of equality, parents often gives a restricted playing time to children in a day, like 1 hour per day between 18-19 before family dinner. So now the family would be required to decide which children play on that night, and which one not.
Just as there would be just one PC, one single player game, and other needs to just sit next there to just watch. So all the money to buy a second PC is useless, in other words, it is useless to have any kind "Family Sharing" feature than just a use as loop hole to overcome the law in some countries, and have a tick to marketing material as "We offer family sharing!" when it is nothing as it should be.




It is totally understandable that in multiplayer you have a license for the player profile that you can lock it out if there is something illegal or wrong happening by the player in online community, like cheating.
But it shouldn't limit the single player experiences, or co-op with a friend or brother etc.
Like take example the original Doom (1993) where you can play with 3 friends using null-modem (or later over Internet) and have fun. One game, installed on four PC, connected to each others and four people playing it. "That is illegal!" screams today some people without any understanding of social behavior! Nothing was lost by anyone in money.

Now try that with Doom 2016.... You can't do that. You don't just need to own 4 PC. You need to have 4 different Steam accounts, and you need to buy the game four times! Just so that four people could sit in the same room and play together the same game... (okay, bad example as that game doesn't have multiplayer, but you get the point....!)




How many remembers when Diablo and other games like Starcraft, they had a Multiplayer client installer for this purpose!

Given how many times this thread has been necro'd, there's no point in not answering it:-

It's always been normal to some extent, eg, a family of 4 buy one DVD to watch together not 4x DVD's and nothing's going to change that. Prior to Steam, games were the same, eg, buy one game then lend the disc to your brother / friend. When games started to come locked to accounts though it was "just yours" purely through technical means and the law has done little to change that in practise in the 19 years Steam has been going. Family Sharing was brought in mostly to deal with the common sense gaming equivalent issue that even when movies come locked to accounts, the same family of 4 still aren't going to take out 4x Netflix subscriptions in one household, nor is there anything to stop you lending your whole computer / console to your brother. It's simply not reasonably enforceable, so it's done mostly to make it look like they're doing you a favour. Being able to share a disc with a friend though is a side effect that discs were naturally transferable (eg, you could resell them), but "Digital" games are not.

However, this is a DRM-Free store and if people abuse "lending" too much then all it does is give publishers an excuse to want more DRM. No-one here wants a reduction in available DRM-Free titles to buy in the first place. Hence why many people's attitude is "Look, with common sense we all agree there's nothing wrong with someone in the same household sharing your games simply because, there's already nothing to stop them using your account on the same computer anyway. But making a fuss out of sharing games with every friend you have outside of that can do more harm than good to DRM-Free (the last bastion of actually owning a game) in general."

No. Just no. If you want to share DRM'd games, just buy the Steam version. Don't foist DRM on the rest of us by inventing problems. If a friend came to your house to visit you, it's not practically detectable nor enforceable to stop them playing on your PC on your account, nor is it realistically regarded as a problem to let them. "Don't share with friends" mostly means don't go giving them copies of your offline installers to take home then pretend you aren't engaged in distributing copies if it's "just sharing". Slapping DRM on it to "let" you do that is literally the least consumer friendly you can do on a DRM-Free store, and is just collective punishment against those of us who 1. want DRM-Free games for reasons of long-term game preservation but 2. Don't share them.

Seems like you might be answering ChatGPT AI bots, which is an AI that has made remarkable advances in recent months and years. It can literally write university level essays for students. And it could also easily make posts on GOG just like the Necro post that you are presently replying to.