Google last week announced that it’s bringing a family sharing feature to its Stadia cloud gaming service.
Google last week announced that Stadia players can now share games with their Google family group, and every group member who creates a Stadia account can play, whether they’ve purchased or claimed the game or not.
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However, the new feature doesn’t apply to “supervised members” of a family group if the shared game has a content rating above that which has been selected for them. It’s not necessary to be an active Stadia Pro subscriber to share games or play shared games but if you share a game claimed with the Stadia Pro subscription and the subscription ends, the game will no longer be shared.
To activate Google Stadia family sharing, you will first need to create a Google family group with the same email address used to set up your Stadia account. Then, you will also need to add a family payment method to the group – before you can share any games with members.
The new family sharing feature on Stadia ensures that families purchase a game once and all members get to play it. Family members get to play the game separately (with separate save data), however, they can’t actually play the same game at the same time.
The family sharing feature uses the Google Play Family Library system, which lets households share the same mobile apps and services across their Android devices.
Of course, sharing games doesn’t just work between members of the same household. When setting up a family group, you can also invite your friends. At least in theory you can.