Do I Have to Buy a Copy of Minecraft for Windows for Family
How to share your PC game library with your family
Remember the former days when y'all could simply go grab a SimCity CD-ROM out of your older brother's room to play on your own PC, and then take it over to your friend'due south house and show him how awesome it was? After his mom took y'all and your all-time bud to hang out at the mall and you bought more games and forgot all most SimCity. That is until your brother realized it was missing and what followed turned into a very unpleasant feel for you.
Well, those days are over. Today, almost all our games are delivered to us digitally over the internet. Skipping the trip to the shop every time we demand a gaming fix has made life user-friendly, but at the expense of flexibility in what we tin can and cannot practice with the games that we "ain". I put that in quotes because typically you do not actually own anything, but are but given a license to use that digital content co-ordinate to the store'due south terms of service.
I don't like paying for things twice. And then as a parent with immature children I'm ever cognizant of how I obtain games that I may want to share with them either now or in the hereafter. For me, if the price of the game is the same, the adjacent thing I look at is which stores it is bachelor on. The ease of sharing games with your family or others is going to exist completely up to the storefront that your purchase from. Even then, some publishers may restrict their games from being shared at all.
Steam
The nearly popular storefront for PC gamers has allowed sharing for quite some time now, and information technology'due south easy to set up.
You will need to have Steam Baby-sit enabled.
The trickiest part of sharing with Steam is you volition demand to log into the same computer your friend or child has previously logged in to with your Steam business relationship. One time you do that, you will need to click on Settings -> Family -> Family Sharing Library and yous should come across an account there to share with. You'll need to do that for each computer you want share with.
One of the best features well-nigh Steam'due south family unit sharing is that each person gets their own cloud saves, so yous don't accept to worry about the users who you lot share with ruining your save data, simply there are some limitations.
Only one person can play a single shared championship at a fourth dimension. If the possessor attempts to play a game that someone else is already playing, that user will accept to go out the game. You can share with five other accounts and authorize upwardly to ten computers. You can manage all the users and computers you accept authorized through the Steam awarding itself.
Steam also provides a feature chosen Family unit View, which allows you to select features of Steam (such equally chat or forum content) and a list of youngster approved games that should become into your Family Games library. During Family View setup, you'll enter a Pin which can be used to disable family view and gain admission to everything again. This needs to be setup on each account that you share with.
Microsoft Store
The Microsoft Store may be one of the most welcoming when it comes to sharing games with your friends and family unit. Similar to Steam, information technology allows you to share with up to five users on up to ten different devices. All the same, unlike Steam yous tin play on multiple PCs simultaneously. My kids can both play Minecraft on their ain PCs from the copy that I actually didn't purchase just received with an Xbox One Minecraft packet, which is another side benefit of the Microsoft Store. With Play Anywhere titles, yous get the rights to play on both console and PC.
You volition need to create a family group for your Microsoft account and each user will need their own Microsoft account, including children. You can manage the members in your family grouping here.
Once the family grouping is created you so simply need to login to the PC as the user you want to share the game with and open the Microsoft Store to download the game. Each user will have their ain game saves and, every bit mentioned, tin can play simultaneously. This approach should too work for other content on the Microsoft Store such as apps, movies, or Idiot box shows.
Another bonus for parents is Microsoft will allow you to set screen time limits, location sharing, content filtering, and fifty-fifty send you a weekly report of your child'due south activities on their PC.
GOG
CD Projeckt's GOG.com is a scrap of an outlier on this list in that it does non sell games with DRM attached to information technology. Games are solely protected past the award arrangement. You tin can download any game you lot own and do with it what you lot want, such as store it on external hard drives for backup. However, giving it to a friend is specifically not allowed according to GOG.com'southward FAQ:
Your account and games are for your personal employ only. If you want to share them, you tin e'er buy a gift for that person. The DRM-free nature of our service means that we trust you that this will not be abused.
So don't practise information technology.
However, you are allowed to install your games on as many computers as you want within your household. Therefore, sharing with your family members is fine as long as they are living with you. However, those users won't be able to take advantage of GOG.com's cloud saving feature.
Ballsy Games Store
The newly launched online storefront from the makers of the ever popular Fortnite does non seem to offer whatever family friendly features at this time. This isn't all that surprising equally this is not one of the must have features to get a new store out there. Hopefully, Ballsy decides to add the characteristic to their service soon.
Origin
Origin does not provide a manner to share games with others at this fourth dimension either. They do, nevertheless offering a gifting characteristic, but you will accept to pay for the game once again in guild to share it with others.
Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-share-your-pc-game-library-with-your-family/