Yes — on every major platform, using a feature the platform holder built on purpose. What differs is what you are sharing. On PlayStation and Xbox you designate one console as the one your library lives on, and anyone using that console can play your games. On Nintendo you lend a specific game to a specific family member for two weeks. On Steam you join a family group. None of it involves giving anyone your password, and none of it is a loophole.
This matters to a budget buyer more than almost anything else on this site, because it is the only legitimate mechanism that halves the price of a new game. A $70 release split with a sibling is a $35 release. The catch is that each platform's version has a hard limit built into it, and three of the four limits are the kind you only discover after you have already rearranged your household around them.
Everything below is quoted from PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and Valve's own documentation, fetched the day this page was written and listed in full under Sources. We have deliberately not filled gaps with forum lore: where a platform does not state something, we say that instead of guessing. One thing we will say plainly up front, because it is the honest frame for the whole page: these systems are designed for households and families, and every one of them can be switched off or changed by the platform holder. Share with someone you will still be speaking to in a year.
The rules, platform by platform
PlayStation 5: Console Sharing and Offline Play
PlayStation's feature is a console setting, not a person setting, and the wording is worth reading literally. PlayStation's support page says that "When you enable Console Sharing and Offline Play, anyone who uses your PS5 console can" "Play games and media you've purchased and downloaded" and "Play your games and media even when the console is offline."
Read "anyone who uses your PS5 console" carefully, because that is the whole mechanism. You enable the setting on a console, and every account on that console can play what you own — which is how two people in different houses share a library: you enable it on their console and play on yours while signed in to your own account.
The limit: PlayStation states that "You can turn on Console Sharing and Offline Play on one PS5 console at a time", and that to move it you turn it off on the previous console first. One console, and moving it is a deliberate act — so if you set it on a friend's machine, your own console is no longer the shared one, and your own games will want an internet connection to verify. That is the trade people are surprised by.
The subscription catch:PlayStation's separate page on sharing PS Plus benefits limits them to accounts on one PS5 with Console Sharing enabled plus your primary PS4, and not to accounts on other consoles. So a subscription does not travel as freely as a purchase does. Whether the subscription is worth buying at all is is PS Plus worth it, and the subscription-versus-buying arithmetic generally is are game subscriptions worth it.
Xbox: set your home Xbox
Microsoft's version is the oldest and the most generous in day-to-day use. Xbox Support describes designating a console as your home Xbox as the thing that gives friends and family access to your games and content when you are not signed in, and that also lets you play your own digital games offline. Same shape as PlayStation's: the library lives on a console rather than following a person.
The limit, and it is the one to write down: Xbox Support states that "You can switch your home Xbox up to five times in any one-year period. Customer support can't offer additional switches." Five. That is a real ceiling if you are tempted to move it back and forth between two households, and Microsoft is explicit that support will not grant more. You also get one home Xbox at a time.
The practical read: Xbox sharing works beautifully as a standing arrangement between two people who each keep one console and do not fiddle with it, and badly as something you toggle. Decide once.
Nintendo: virtual game cards, and what you can actually lend
Nintendo rebuilt this entirely, and its model is now completely different from the other two: you do not share a library, you lend one game. Nintendo's virtual game card page states that "You can lend one game per account for 14 days (unless the borrower returns it earlier)" and that "You can also lend out virtual game cards to your Nintendo Account family group members."
Four consequences, all from Nintendo's own documentation. One: lending is restricted to your Nintendo Account family group, so this is not a share-with-a-friend-across-town system the way the console-designation models are. Two:while a game is lent out the lender cannot play it — it is a loan, exactly like handing over a cartridge, which is the point of the design. Three: DLC you have bought goes with the game when you lend it, and a borrowed card cannot be lent on to someone else. Four: Nintendo says "Both local wireless and internet communication are required for lending software", so you need to be in the same room to start a loan.
Separately from lending, the number that helps a two-console household is this one: "Up to two systems total can be linked per Nintendo Account." So a family with a Switch and a Switch 2 can move a digital game between the two rather than buying it twice, and Nintendo notes that once a card is loaded to a system "other user accounts on the system can play, too". One documented catch to plan around if you are loading a handheld for a journey: "An internet connection is required the first time you start a game that you have loaded to your system."
Not everything is lendable — Nintendo's guide notes that some software, including titles you have access to through a Nintendo Switch Online membership, cannot be lent out. That is one of the quieter arguments for owning rather than subscribing, which we lay out in is Nintendo Switch Online worth it.
Switch 2 GameShare: the one that is genuinely new
Switch 2 added a second, different thing, and it is the only feature on this page that lets someone play a game they do not own and you have not lent. Nintendo says only a Nintendo Switch 2 can share compatible games, that it can share over local wireless to both Switch 2 and original Switch systems, and that up to four systems can take part in a session. Local GameShare does not require a Nintendo Switch Online membership; sharing online over GameChat does.
The honest limit:Nintendo states that players who receive software this way can only play it during the session in which it was shared. So GameShare is a way to get three friends into a game you own for an evening, not a way to give them a copy. For a household that already owns a cheap co-op library, that is still a real saving — the shelf it works best with is best cheap games to play with friends and best cheap games for Switch 2. Only games flagged as GameShare-compatible work, and Nintendo's eShop lets you filter for them.
Steam: Steam Families
Valve replaced the old Family Library Sharing with Steam Families, and the headline is that a family group of up to six people can play games from each other's libraries. The rule that surprises people is about simultaneity: two members who want to play the same game at the same time need two copies of it, though everyone can play different games from the shared library at once. Developers can also opt individual titles out of family sharing.
We will point you at Valve's own current FAQ rather than freeze its rules into this page, because Steam Families has changed twice already and the exact membership and cooldown terms are Valve's to state. Worth knowing for this site specifically: Amazon does not sell Steam keys or Steam gift cards, so there is nothing for us to monetize here and no reason for us to oversell it. The cheap-PC lane is cheap PC games, and if a third-party site is offering you a Steam key at a startling price, read are gray-market game keys safe first.
How to actually use this to spend less
Split a full-price game, do not split a cheap one
The saving scales with the price, and so does the hassle. Sharing is worth arranging for a $70 launch game you both want; it is not worth arranging for a $15 back-catalog game, where the admin costs more than the discount. So the sensible pattern is: share the expensive new release, buy the cheap catalog outright. Our cheap shelves are best games under $20 and best value games, and the reason new games cost what they cost is why do games cost $70.
Decide who holds the account before you buy anything
On PlayStation and Xbox the library lives with whoever bought it, and the other person is playing on a console configured to allow it. That is fine between people who trust each other and awkward between people who do not. Before you split a purchase, agree out loud on who buys and therefore who owns it — and remember the Xbox five-switches-a-year ceiling, which quietly makes "we will take turns holding it" a bad plan.
Gift cards are the clean way to split the money
The tidiest way to go halves is for the person who is not buying to hand over store credit rather than cash: the money is then locked to the platform it was meant for, and nobody is owed anything. Official digital gift cards are also the only safe way to put funds on an account — they are first-party codes rather than resold keys. The three below are the ones we keep in the registry, with live prices.
One warning worth repeating from are games region locked: gift cards are tied to the store region of the account. A card bought for the wrong region is unusable and non-refundable, which is the single most common way people waste money on this.
What sharing does not get you
It does not get you someone else's save file, it does not get you their subscription's full benefits, and it does not survive a platform policy change. Treat every arrangement on this page as a convenience that could end, not as ownership. If permanence is what you actually want, a disc is still the most durable thing on the shelf — that argument is physical vs digital games, and the resale side of it is are used games worth it.
