Steam family sharing shows “buy” instead of “play”

So my friend let me try out Arma 3 by adding my account to family sharing. So he logged onto his account on my PC (Using TeamViewer) and added my account to family sharing, and while logged into his account, I downloaded Arma 3. The next morning, I logged out of his account, went onto mine and Arma 3 was there downloaded in my account but it had the “buy” symbol instead of play. I could see all of his other games but I couldn’t play Arma 3.

He also wasn’t playing anything at the time.

Any ideas?

Best Answer

Certain games are excluded from Steam family sharing. Arma 3 is one of them. Unfortunately, this means if you want to play Arma 3 you will either have to buy it, or play it while logged into your friend's account.

An (outdated) list of ineligible games can be found here

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Why is family sharing not working on Steam?

Steam Family Sharing is a feature that allows multiple users to share the same account from different PCs, but it seems like it is sometimes not working. The first thing to do is to de-authorize and authorize the shared Steam library. In order to fix this issue, you can try and verify the integrity of Steam Files.

Why are my family shared games not showing up on Steam?

Make sure that you have Steam Guard security enabled via Steam > Settings > Account in the Steam Client. From the Steam Settings panel select the Family tab (or in Big Picture mode, Settings > Family Library Sharing). Here you can select users who have also logged into this computer to share your library with.

Why is Steam only showing me buy instead of play option for a game shared via family sharing?

Steam Family Sharing only allows you to play the game if the account the game is actually purchased under isn't active. It counts as active if anyone is playing any game in it.

How do you reset family sharing on Steam?

Open the Run dialog box by pressing the Windows key and R key in combination on your keyboard. Type cmd in the dialog box to open Command Prompt and then type \u201cnetsh winsock reset\u201d in the Command Prompt (without the quotation marks). Press enter to reset the Winsock Catalog and then restart your computer.

How To Steam Family Sharing 2021

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