this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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I have three sons, they live in the West Coast, I live in the Midwest. I can't join a family with them. That's a bummer.
Why not? My Steam Family is just a group of friends spread out all across the country. Geographic distance shouldn't be an issue.
I don't really know how it works but according to a lot of other people here it doesn't work unless you are in the same region. This isn't the only person here saying they can't use it because they don't live near their family.
They're doing IP location checks, and they're doing them badly (there's not really a way to do them well). It's not working for me with people in the same town, and other people are reporting it's randomly working or not working with locations in the same neighborhood.
Why can't you?
I get a big red banner saying sorry, according to your usage patterns you are not in the same family.
Most of what I'm reading online talks about an error complaining about region, in which case you'd want to make sure you're in the same store region.
Other main suggestion is signing into your steam account on their computer. You could probably use something like Microsoft quick assist (which should already be installed iirc) for that
Good luck, if you get a different error or run into other problems please let me know!
Hey! Thanks so much for the helpful response. I really appreciate it!