Some sort of misunderstanding?

[oldgiza]

There seems to be some sort of misunderstanding about TPA over at Steam. To explain, each member of my family have their own side of the family computer, where each of us do our own emails and searches and so on. And when we download video games, each game we download appears on each of our own sides, from where we play it. The same is true of our Xbox. When we downloaded the four seasons of TPA onto our console, that game, and each of our other games, made itself available to each of us, on each of our sides, and each of us play it often on our own side.

Although this is true of all consoles, and all games, for some reason the guys at Steam insist on the members of my family paying for the four seasons of TPA again and again, even though the seasons have already been downloaded and paid for, and even though we only have one computer. Has steam misunderstood something in the rules? Or are they just getting money-hungry?

 

[Jeff Strong]

Purchases are linked to individual Steam accounts. That's the way it works for almost every Steam game.

 

[oldgiza]

Thanks Jeff. But I'm sharing all Steam games except TPA with my grand-daughter. As Steam says:

"Steam Family Library Sharing allows family members and their guests to play one another's games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving their own game progress to the Steam Cloud."

Source: http://store.steampowered.com/promotion/familysharing

 

[JPelter]

I'm honestly not sure how the family sharing thing works, but it seems like contacting steam support with your problem might be the best avenue. They'll probably know if something's wonky and can help you out with it.

 

[oldgiza]

I'm honestly not sure how the family sharing thing works, but it seems like contacting steam support with your problem might be the best avenue. They'll probably know if something's wonky and can help you out with it.

I tried the Steam support page and was directed to the forums, and there they insisted that every member of my family must pay again, for their use of the TPA tables. They even quoted EULA. I started three different threads about it, one at a time, but they were intransigent. For example, see the thread "A question about family sharing" in the Forum "Help and Tips", where one guy said "No matter where you download it, the license is for a single individual to use the content for their own, personal use. It is never intended to allow multiple people to play the content paid for by a single user. If you do so, you are violating the license agreement for Pinball Arcade."

 

[Jeff Strong]

Oh, I've never used that feature. Pardon my ignorance on that.

 

[oldgiza]

Oh, I've never used that feature. Pardon my ignorance on that.

No problem Jeff! But I'm wondering... should each member of my family pay again for the four seasons of TPA? Or not?

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Family sharing still uses different Steam accounts to actually play the games. Therefore, any DLC that is tied to a Steam account won't work even if the base game will. Pretty sure this isn't restricted to TPA.

On the other hand, setting up Family Mode allows different people to share the same Steam account, but with restrictions on what games and features can be accessed based on whether Family Mode is switched on or off (controlled by a PIN). In this case, all DLC will work because the Steam account name is the same.

If you don't want to pay for the DLC for every family member, you'll need to have them all log in using the same Steam account, and set up Family Mode to restrict what younger family members can't get at.

 

[Zaphod77]

There are two possible issues.

One is that because the base game is free, it is considered owned by everyone. therefore DLC cannot be shared. You can only share DLC if the person you share with does NOT OWN THE BASE GAME.

from the faq

Who owns and can access the DLC and in-game content associated with a shared title?
A guest will have access to the lender's DLC, but only if the guest doesn't also own the base game. Guests may not purchase DLC for a base game they don't own. Any player may purchase, trade, earn, or otherwise acquire in-game content while playing a game, but in-game items cannot be shared between accounts. These items remain the property of the account that purchased or acquired them, whether borrowing or lending the base game.

The other issue is that the DLC is not handled through the usual steam method. It appears to be tied to the farsight account. To get my backers rewards for TAF, i had to log into my farsight account.

The only legal way is for everyone to buy the seasons.

For xbox360, other people may play as guest players, but the one who bought it MUST be logged in.

For PS3, as long as the ps3 is activated for the PSN user that bougth the game and DLC, any local use or psn account holder can play the game.

For xbox one and ps4, each account can have ONE primary ps4 or xbone. Anyone can play a digital download bought by the account holder that is installed on that account holders primary system. You can also log into any other console and play any digital download you have bought, provided you are not already logged in elsewhere. No one else will be able to play, except on your primary console, unless they also buy the game.

Yeah, it sucks.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

btw my notes are from personal experience of trying to set up my daughter's Steam account and have her access to all of my tables. It didn't work, I asked around in this forum back when I was trying, and got the "it can't be done" response.

Your FS login only affects Kickstarter reward and other "prize" tables such as those won in the Twitch stream drawings. For regularly purchased tables, it's tied to the platform you're playing on.

 

[nudnick]

Your other family members will have to login to Steam under the Steam account that purchased the tables to be able to play it. So if your daughter has her own Windows profile, she would have to logon to her windows profile and then logon to Steam with your Steam logon to be able to play. That is to keep you from having 4 computers at the house and all of your family (or neighborhood friends) playing TPA at the same time when only one of you paid for the license.