Family sharing turns TF2 from F2P to Premium for free

steamclosed reviewed

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#3447 · opened 2014-08-23 by mtmkls · updated 2014-09-04 · 5 comments · github

Mmtmkls 2014-08-23 github

Steps to reproduce:

be a Premium user
let your friend who is F2P login from your machine
login as you again
share your steam library with your friend's account
log in again as your friend
start tf2, and enjoy your upgraded experience

The downside is that the "who helped you the most" popup for giving away the Professor's Speks will not appear. I haven't tried whether a normal way of upgrading (buying orange box, buying something from mann.co) adds this notification or not, but I suspect that it doesn't.

Ggdrewb-valve maintainer 2014-08-25 github

Likely not Linux-specific.

Mmtmkls 2014-08-28 github

Is it worth contacting steam support about this issue? I was really looking forward to do a Professor's Speks exchange with my friend.

Ggdrewb-valve maintainer 2014-08-28 github

It can't hurt.

Mmtmkls 2014-08-30 github

It seems the effect was only temporary, and it has worn off by now.

Ggdrewb-valve maintainer 2014-09-03 github

I passed this on to the TF2 team and they indicated there was some caching in the system that could hold things over for a period, which lines up with the effect going away after a while. They don't think there's an actual exploit here.

Nothing extracted yet.