Same household only? Why can't they just allow a certain number of people in your "family" use it? I have no kids, but I'd like to allow my siblings or in-laws use my games. They live in different cities.
I really doubt they've got an IP lock in place; just set up a Family and invite your siblings and in-laws.
Edit: tried it with a buddy, and it is in fact IP locked; he was unable to join until I set up a VPN for him to connect through. After initial setup, you don't need the same IP address.
They do point out that they will be monitoring how it's used, and could adjust things later.
Sounds like corporate-speak for "if people abuse this, we'll lock it down harder."
Even if people are using it to share with actual family around the country, they may get caught up in future updates that remove that feature. Also note that any publisher can opt out of the sharing. If EA or Ubi or some other big company doesn't like the lack of limits, they may be able to force Valve's hand in changing the policy.
The idea is wonderful, but there are a ton sof ways this could end up worse than the old system.
You can likely use it from different physical locations. But just know that I'm order to set it up, you have to login with your account on their computer at some point to enable the family sharing feature. So unless you go there qnd do it, or remote into their computer to do it, or give them your password, you can't use that feature. Some level of trust in each other is required.
That is not how the new families work. The new on all you need to do is sent an invite and they'll be able to join the family. No need to log in their computers or authorise anything, just a simple invite.
Because the point of this is to force friends and adult family members to purchase extra copies of games. Do yall actually think Valve is giving away free game access?
To those who are saying it's not IP locked: people on reddit are all saying that the newer sign-ups are locked but they didn't clear older sharing from early beta.
We've been using it since it came available to test, and is such a lovely change from before. The check out system is so much cleaner than the old locked out of account while someone in the family is playing.