As if Gabe Newell had to do anything more with Steam for PC game players to consider him their benevolent overlord, there might be an amazing new feature coming to the service. Some code has been located in the most recent Steam beta that mentions a “shared library.” That’s right, you could potentially let your friends borrow your PC games in the future.
The addition of a shared library would be giving the PC something that has long been an advantage consoles have over it. Once you’re done with a PC game, there’s not much you can do with it outside of uninstalling it or just leaving it to wallow in your personal Steam library. I can’t do this with the games I have on my PC, but shouldn’t that be an option?
These are the lines found in the code that indicate the possibility of a shared library:
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicense_Title” “Shared game library”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_OwnerText” “Just so you know, your games are currently in use by %borrower%. Playing now will send %borrower% a notice that it’s time to quit.”
“SteamUI_JoinDialog_SharedLicenseLocked_BorrowerText” “This shared game is currently unavailable. Please try again later or buy this game for your own library.”
Regardless of intention, this code found was only in the beta, and Valve has neither confirmed nor denied the coming of a shared library. So this is all up in the air now. Maybe Valve will give us the ability to sell our used Steam games next? At least let us trade them in for virtual hats, folks.
(via Kotaku)
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