Item: How to Setup Steam Family Library Sharing With Ease
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Author: Aiman Maulana

How to Setup Steam Family Library Sharing With Ease

Last updated: June 24, 2020 2:36 am

By Aiman Maulana

4 Min Read

Table of Content

How to Setup Steam Family Library Sharing

Giving Access to Games In Your Steam Account
Requesting Access to Games in Other People’s Steam Account

Limitations of Steam Family Library Sharing

How to Setup Steam Family Library Sharing With Ease

One of the most useful features Valve created for their digital storefront is the Steam Family Library Sharing. It basically lets other people play the games that are on your account without the need to access the account. They can use their account to play those games and it won’t interfere with your own game progress as they’re playing with their own account. However, the steps to take for it may seem a bit confusing, and that’s why we’re here to help.

There are two ways to setup Steam Family Library Sharing; one as the owner of the account giving people access to the library and the other as the “borrower” who is requesting to share games. We’ll go through each side one-by-one.

Giving Access to Games In Your Steam Account

On the PC that you want your games to be shared with, log into your Steam account. You can do this in person or remotely.
Ensure that Steam Guard is enabled (Steam > Settings > Account).
Select the Family tab in the Steam Settings panel and select the users to share your library with. It will only contain users who have logged into the same PC.
Select “Authorize Library Sharing on this Computer”.
Tick the box next to the account you’d like to share your games library with.

Requesting Access to Games in Other People’s Steam Account

Ensure that Steam Guard is enabled (Steam > Settings > Account).
When clicking on a game in your library, you can see games owned by other Steam accounts that use the same PC. Simply play that game to request access to that library.
The owner will then receive an email with a link. They will have to click on that to approve the request.

And that’s all you need to know. It’s really that simple, and you can visit the “Family” tab in Settings to manage it. You can remove access either in person or remotely if you wish using the Steam software via the Manage Family Library Sharing section.

While the idea sounds really good, it doesn’t act as if you actually purchased the game. As such, there are some limitations that you should take note of when you’re playing a shared game as the “borrower”.

Both the borrower and owner cannot play the same game at the same time unless both of you own the game.
If the owner suddenly starts up the game that a borrower is playing, the borrower will automatically be kicked out of the game in 10 minutes.
While many games do allow the use of the feature, not every game can be shared.

Now that you have this newfound information, go and enjoy yourself. Just remember to use this feature responsibly. If it ever gets abused, we wouldn’t be surprised to Valve remove the feature in the future.