Let's say I have two friends (A and B) who shared their libraries with me. Let's also say they both own a copy of the game I want to play, and that I don't own it myself.
Now logic would say that if one of my friend (A) is playing this game, the Family Sharing system would make the switch and allow me to use my second friend's library (B's).
That doesn't seem to be what's happening.
What seems to be happening is that the game seems to be ONLY in the shared library of the first friend who shared his library with me (A). As a result, when A is playing this game, i can't play it as well, even if B isn't using his library.
Is this a known issue ? Is there a way around it ?
Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
As Scott Weldon said, there doesn't seem to be any way to do this other than disabling sharing of the friend whose library is in use, or using offline mode as Jaxir said to prevent the library from being in use in the first place. You can change the order in which your friends share libraries with you by having them unshare and reshare the library with you, in order to play your games with the library of whichever friend is least likely to be using it, but for a general solution to choose which friend's library to use, you'll need sfs-select.
SFS-select is a python tool to enable and disable friends' shared libraries by modifying the local cache remembering which accounts have authorized you. It's a bit of a clunky workaround, but it lets you pick exactly which friend's library you would like to use for a shared game, without needing your friends to log in to your computer again, or changing the actual permissions registered on the Steam server at all. It includes both graphical and command-line versions. You can download it here or read about it on the Steam forum thread.