14 DAY TRIAL // A brand new petition has appeared online relating to Valve's new Steam Family Sharing system for the Steam digital distribution service, asking for fewer restrictions and changes that will allow a game library's owner and the borrower to play different titles at the same time.
Valve impressed a lot of Steam users when it confirmed that it was going to debut a special Steam Family Sharing system in the near future, allowing Steam users to share access to their games library with up to ten other people, whether they're family or just friends.
Unfortunately, there's a catch to this system, as once the library's owner starts playing a game from it, the borrower can no longer access any game from his friend's collection.
As you can imagine, quite a few people are upset with this restriction, calling for Valve to remove this mechanic via a special petition on Change.org that's already gathered around 5,000 signatures.
"PC Gamers with multiple users in their households have been requesting family sharing pretty much since the day that Steam was released," the petition's founder wrote about his initiative.
"Now that it's finally here, we've found out that only one user is allowed to access an entire library at a time requiring that users choose between letting their families play singleplayer/multiplayer games or kick them off and force them to buy another copy or wait until no one's using it. This pretty much makes Steam Family Sharing a glorified way to share your password without sharing your password."
The petition also draws a comparison to console gaming, where the same game disc can be shared among users and consoles easily, without restrictions.
"When you go out and buy a console game, you have rights to that game. If there are multiple users in your household that play games, you probably have multiple consoles and there is no such restriction. This is a huge disadvantage and it is why many families would rather purchase a multiplatform game on consoles instead of PC despite how much better PC ports generally are."
As of yet, unfortunately, Valve hasn't commented on this initiative.