How to share games with the Steam Family Loan + Tips and Tricks

With a catalog of several hundred thousand titlesIt is normal that not all users have all the games available on Steam. And it is that although we always end up sinning during their recurring periods of offers, our portfolio does not always allow us to have all the games that we would like.

Although we can always make use of Steam Family Loan, an option that will allow us share the games in our library with our trusted family and friends. A completely free service whose activation will not take us more than a few minutes, with a fairly simple configuration that we will review below.

How to activate Steam Family Loan

Also known as Steam Family Sharing. The first thing we must do is activar Steam Guard, the platform’s double authentication tool. To do this, we will only have to access the tab «Steam», in the upper left corner of the menu, and access the options and «Parameters».

From this new pop-up window, and in the first side section of “Account”, we will only have to click on “Manage Steam Guard Account Protection”, and follow the steps that the wizard of the tool will give us. Once this is done, we can proceed to the activation of permissions in the teams of friends or family with whom we want to share our library of games.

To do this, we will have to access the computer of our family member or friend with whom we want to share our games physically, using our Steam account. Following the same steps as in the previous action, we will access the «Parameters », this time selecting the second option from the side column, “Family”. From here, we will only have to click on the option «Authorize the family loan on this computer», and automatically the computer will search for computers that are connected to our same network.

We can also manage the equipment within our loan group by clicking on the option “Manage other computers” that appears in the window «Parameters> Family », where we can see both the users and the last active sessions, and manage their permissions.

Steam Family Loan Limitations

As is logical, since it is a free tool that replaces the need to buy games within this platform, we will also have certain limitations for the service.

The first, interestingly, is that not all games in shared libraries may appear in child accounts, as there is a small selection of titles that are not supported with this service.

In addition, we can only authorize a maximum of 5 accounts and 10 computers under one account and shared library counting our devices, something important to note in the event that we use a desktop computer and an additional laptop.

On the other hand, the greatest limitation of the Steam family loan is that we will not be able to access the library simultaneously. And it is that whether the host or one of the guests opens a game from the library, it will block access to all the games of the rest of the users.

Even so, the account owner will always have the preference, being able to access the games at any time even if there is another person in their library. Of course, causing the departure of this other person, who will have a few minutes of courtesy to purchase the game before losing the connection to it.

However, there are some small ways to evade this limitation, especially with games that do not require an online connection, closing our Steam session when we already have the game started.