Here’s something quite interesting, it looks as if Valve are set to offer game sharing on Steam.
Datamined from the recent Steam beta update, the following lines of code indicate that Valve are looking to open up game libraries to more than one user. As you’d expect only one person can play at time, but it will make life easier for some users.
“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_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText” “This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library.”
This update comes on the back of Microsoft offering a similar feature with the Xbox One where games can be shared with other “family members” and Valve obviously want a chunk of that action for PC gamers.
How this would affect game sales is unclear, but it would surely have an impact. If I had access to Tim’s Steam library, I could play just about any game ever released on the service. Still, it’s an interesting development that will please Steam users should it get pushed live.
Thanks Neogaf.
