after all the cool stuff the last time we come to some more serious things - family share accounts and donations (different topic).
Some facts
Steam has the feature to share your account. Of course meant for families. However with this feature you can create infinite accounts and abuse them to its best in games like Empyrion.
Once again few bad people ruin the good intentions of good people.
We can already see who is doing that but without every data with one click. It needs real inception hunts to find relationships from A to B.
On EU we have almost 0 family share users. On NA however over 10ā¦
Family Share setting
So we had this kind of dramas in the last year multiple times and after the last NA drama, bringing this abuse to a next level, spending day after day dealing with it we requested a setting from Eleon to just block these users in the dedicated.yaml. You only can play with your main account.
Happy days we would say but we want to ask the real people who are using this feature.
Who is using the family share feature with honest true intentions?
I donāt want a poll because people who are family share abusers are also forum multi account abusers and I donāt have the time to sort these trolls out.
Everyone who uses family share the real way and is against our decision to activate it with 5.2 needs to write his ingame name so we can check in which way you are using it. Unproofed cries will be ignored otherwise!
Again if you donāt have so much money to buy multiple empyrion keys then family share is quite cool but the reality shows us the more darker side of it than the light side and we are keepers of the light of course
I was thinking about using it, I bought some time another Epyriom key for one of my children, and it started a little in HWS, my other son also liked it and for him at first I would try to share it, but not even Make use of it because I thought it was not possible for me and him to play at the same time and I still think it is not possible, if I am playing, I think he can not play at the same time ā¦ anyway I find it very sad, for the acts Of few players, many others are disadvantaged ā¦
Great stuff. Family share will not let you use any shared games if the primary account is in use.
If I remember correcly, if the shared user is playing some game and the owner starts another game, the shared user is forced to exit. So it has absolutely no use in Empyrion.
If you want to play in the same server, you will want to also connect at the same time as much as possible, and you need to buy the game for that.
There is also another issue. When you find a spy and kick it from faction, that player can go and change his steam name, log on again and you donāt know that is the same spy/griefer from before. Also if they have a short name itās almost impossible to locate his steam profile. So I think the game could provide a way to get his steam ID so you keep your own black list of steam IDs.
[quote=āRexXxuS, post:1, topic:4138ā]
Who is using the family share feature with honest true intentions?
[/quote]I am as you just received the PMās from the other account. I believe my intentions are good and I explained them. Just posting here because there are valid reasons to multi account / family share so others can read it as well.
I also have the donation problem + Iām NOT family sharing (I have a lot of Steam accounts, which is also legit). Iām multi accounting which is different. Iām not bot-farming either nor spying or any of that bullcrap.
And the family share block does not stop multi accounters, they can still do it if they really want to cause damage. While others who used it for a veeeeeeeeeery long time now get punished for it.
It probably went wrong the moment the rules were lifted (spying was no longer an offense as of 5.0) and multi-accounting and family sharing has always been allowed. So those people jumped at at this opportunity. This is expected in a competitive online PVP game (did the admins expect this not to happen?). But it still broke the cause-no-damage-to-the-community rule.
A few turds ruined it for the others and caused damage to the community. Why are they simply not punished? Iām the one that feels punished instead by thisā¦
I do not use family share - I tried playing games with my wife once. It wasnāt a good experience for either of us. I am not very good at playing on a ācasualā levelā¦
With that out of the way - itās not possible to use family share to play WITH someone you are sharing with.
So I am really confused by a legitimate usecase for it in a multiplayer server. Are people just using it to spam extra autominers on donator planets? Joining rival factions? Free FA supply for their mains?
Really every single usecase I can think of involves enriching your main account.
Finally - the game regularly goes on sale for $10. Even if you want to feed yourself extra autominers - cough up the $10 and support the devs.
I am all for preventing shared accounts from accessing multiplayer servers.
We have that possibility. Thats why we were able to uncover a few nasty spys. but we need ot check that and understnad the ingame love/hate relationships to see whos a spy or notā¦ thats a lot of work
Yeah Iām talking about removing that load from the admins.
I.E. I see that guy spied on us, I just kick him and write down his ID.
Next time a player wants to join the facion, I check his ID to see he is no a spy from before.
A little manual work for us the players but should help.
[quote=āMordgier, post:7, topic:4138ā]
Finally - the game regularly goes on sale for $10. Even if you want to feed yourself extra autominers - cough up the $10 and support the devs.
[/quote]I use that instead of family sharing. But think this falls under the same category as family sharing nowā¦
@Jascha
What about people coughing up another 10 bucks and then spying using VPN or WIFI from another point? How do you stop the few turds that abuse it with or without rules? Different IP, hardware, steamID, everything different and they can even be online at the same time. You will likely never find out who the spy is if they take enough time to live up to their role of spy.
Also it still costs you admin timeā¦
Maybe you have only 1 PC and 2 people who want to play?
Maybe you are a hoarder and just want more OCD space (causes no damage to community/market and costs a lot of real life money).
Maybe you want one for PVP and one for PVE.
Maybe you want one for roleplay and one for āshoot-allā.
Maybe you just want to learn specific designs.
Maybe you just have too much money in real life.
Or maybe you are a turd who just wants to spy. Then not get punished while others do.
Upgrading HWS miners costed me more than it gave me I think (player resets after inactivityā¦). Lost soooo many credits upgrading them all again and takes a long time before they break-evenā¦
Double-mining donator planets is not an advantage because donator planets are not considered to be an advantage anyway (otherwise itās pay2win). On top of that you can have multiple donator planets (1 per player yes but not 1 per āfriend-groupā) and share access for all the automining needs you ever need. No need to multi acc for this. Or just dupe items because the devs seem to never fix those dupe bugs.
Double RP farming = painā¦ Especially in 5.1 not even remotely worth it. Actually I still see no point to RP other than NPC packages (which hardly cost any RP) but that is another story. Iām trying to literally waste my RP so I donāt get too much so no advantage either.
And more reasons.
But yes there are cases where it can be abused to an advantage (double drilling, spying, andā¦ no ideaā¦ I bet more). But stopping all forms of multi-accounting because of those turdsā¦ Feels too extreme in the other direction.
Nice workaroundā¦ that could be also done as a chatbot command.
We know that we cant prevent it, but it would be a bit harder. Iām also not that much for disabling Family share accounts since some use it legit, and some ONLY play with their fam-account here (20 people).
But there are othersā¦ dont want to mention namesā¦ they have over 6 accounts on the serverā¦ all in one factionā¦very suspicious.
But lets give those who use it a way to respond to this trheat. We dont want a endless discussion here, just to give those who use it a fair chance to say something.
It was easy in EVE to set access levels and groups and to track access to the corp assets, stations and so on.
Once a member is in the faction in Empyrion, they have full access to in game registry and have access to structure commander from HWS connect without even logging in.
There is no way too have a probationary period. Thatās why weāve been ridiculously paranoid being mostly former EVE players.
I really do not want to treat new joiners on HWS like we treated new joiners in EVE - spies until proven otherwise. Some corps would actually demand new joiners to give them time codes that had real life value as collateral. Good times.
Iām biased but Iām hoping (instead of ābanningā all multi accounts):
Allow multi accounting as long as the admins are aware of you doing so (so when you create a new account, PM admin with the names of all your accounts, which one is main account and perhaps the reason for doing so). Iām even fine with a one-time 2-5$ fee for this because it costs admin time.
Disallow family (not multi accounting) sharing (unless strong arguments + proof are presented to allow this like father+kid). If too hard to implement then they must simply create another Steam account instead.
Change rule 2.4 to disallow spying instead (costs admin time) or FULLY allow it to the fullest extend (but drama will occur). Iād vote for disallowing it again. Hopefully it wonāt occur too often and add a SEVERE punishment for it (because damage & admin time are also severe). Iām thinking return of value of items to victims and perma ban to offender. But not retro-active. From now on.
Add a limit of 2-3 accounts total to prevent botfarms with like 20 accountsā¦ That is obviously not okay anymore. And perhaps refund some (at least partially) that have more than that amount unless they have really been abusing it of course.
Other reasons to not completely ban multi accounting:
You canāt stop determined spies anyway.
You can park on PVE with private (not exactly ideal but you can).
Some players multi-accounted since v1.0 or v2.0 without causing any form of damage/drama. It can be legitimately used, it brings in extra cash for the devs and for your server.
This thread is about family sharing. Maybe you should open a new thread about multi-acc, but I didnāt see them going to ban multi acc anywhere.
Also they could limit multi-acc to same origin only. (maybe ok guardian+trader). This check can be automated as to not add more work for admins.
My brother used this feature but didnāt play very much. He started using my own account (when I didnāt log off Steam) and would play on my account (he was being lazy and wanted to use my monster rig)ā¦ I logged back in, stranded in space at Black Hole, my CV goneā¦ I still have no idea what happened; he wonāt tell meā¦ Iām guessing an alien bunker took him out when he was mining an asteroid and he is afraid to tell me. Regardlessā¦ I think heās done with Empyrion.
My son and I both play on this server and have separate accounts and copies of the game. The only concern is we are both on the same LAN which uses our router to access the internet. From a server point of view, both of these simultaneous connections come from the same IP which is our router. Again we arenāt using family sharing at all. My only concern is getting ātrickyā to ban players affect those of us playing legitimately if you are using IP tracking only.
I can see why you would say that, but think outside the game. Think multiple accounts with different games on each. Add in family members that want to play a certain game on a certain account (but I have THIS car in rocket league and itās not on that account). Stir into this broth multiple computers, not all of which have all of the games already installed. Season this with the fact that everyone knows āthis computer plays that game better, and itās my turn.ā In the end, itās often easier just to have them play the game offline (to avoid the whole steam multiple user check) and use a shared family account. It may seem far fetched, but we live there most days.
