How to Save Money with Steam Family Sharing — Buy Once, Play Together

When people in the same house, or close friends, each buy the same game separately, you're paying twice for the exact same thing. But Steam has a Family Sharing feature that lets you share your game library with someone else. Used well, one purchase can be enjoyed by several people, which cuts your game spending in a big way. This article lays out, without the jargon, how to save with Family Sharing and what to watch out for.

What is Family Sharing?

Put simply, it's 'lending your game shelf to family and friends.' It lets the games on your account be installed and played on someone else's account too. They don't have to buy the game separately, and since everyone plays on their own account, saves (your progress) and achievements pile up on your own profile, kept separate. Steam bundles this into a 'Steam Families' group so that, up to a set number of people, you can all share each other's games.

Quick check: it's a lot like borrowing a book from the library. One copy (game) can be read by several people, but there's usually a limit on 'the same book at the same time.' More on that below.

How it saves you money

The core idea is 'buy once, play with several people.' Say two siblings both want to play the same single-player game — only one of them buys it, shares it through Family Sharing, and the other gets to play for free. When family members open up the games they each bought to one another, the whole group gets to enjoy far more games without spending more. Especially if the whole family uses Steam, just having everyone buy different games and pool them into the sharing group makes your library balloon several times over.

A quick example

Say two siblings both want the same single-player game. At a $60 list price, buying it twice runs $120 — but if only one of them buys it and shares it through Family Sharing, both get to play for that one $60, exactly half the cost. It gets even better when the whole family buys different games and pools them into the sharing group. Dad picks up a racing game, one sibling grabs an action game, the other a puzzle game — three people each pay for a single game, yet all three get to play all three, so the library effectively triples. The one catch, as noted, is that if two people want to play the same game at the same time, you'll each still need your own copy — you can't save through sharing there, but you can make it up by grabbing it cheap on sale.

What to watch out for

Free doesn't mean it does everything. There are a few limits. First, it's usually tricky for two people to play games from the same person's library at the same time — while one person is playing a shared game, if the original owner launches a game, the person borrowing it may get bumped out shortly after (again, like not being able to read one copy of a book at once). Second, some games (especially ones tied to a separate account or online-only titles) can't be shared at all. Third, if you break the rules while using someone else's shared account, your account can face penalties, so only ever use it within the Family Sharing feature the way Steam intends.

And no matter how close you are, swapping whole accounts with 'someone you don't really know' is risky. If your account details get handed over, there's a real danger of theft or a ban, so it's safest to do Family Sharing through Steam's official feature and only with 'people you can trust.'

How to turn it on — the rough flow

Setting it up is simpler than you'd think. In broad strokes, the person lending the games and the person receiving them just register each other as 'trusted family.' There's a Family Sharing (Family) area inside Steam's settings, and from there you approve the people you want to share your library with. Once you've registered someone, they can install and play your games from their own account from then on. The exact menu location and wording change from time to time, so just look for 'Family' in Steam's settings and follow the on-screen prompts. Keep in mind you sign in first with the account that owns the games you're lending, and the person receiving them needs their own Steam account too.

Games you can't share — just buy them cheap anyway

Some games can't be shared, or you both want to play at the same time so you each have to own a copy (like a multiplayer game you play together). In those cases you'll end up buying it anyway, and if you're going to buy, buying at the cheapest possible moment is the win. On Lowstamp you can compare that game's current price against its all-time low, check the 'Should I buy now?' verdict, and when it's near the all-time low have each person buy — so what you couldn't save through sharing you make back with the sale.

Buy once and share with family; for what you can't share, buy it when it's cheapest.

To sum up, Steam Family Sharing is a great way to save on games by 'buying a game once and sharing it with family and friends you trust.' Just go in knowing the limits — the same-game simultaneous-play restriction, and some games that can't be shared — and steer clear of the risky habit of swapping whole accounts. Save what you can through sharing, buy the games you each need to own at their all-time low, and the whole family gets to enjoy far more games for the same money.