What are the cons of Apple Family Sharing?

As an avid iOS gamer and streamer, I was initially excited to try out Apple‘s Family Sharing feature to easily access new games and subscriptions with family and friends. But over time, I realized there are some non-obvious downsides for passionate gamers looking to get the most out of their Apple devices.

In short, the key cons of enabling Family Sharing on your Apple ID include:

• Extremely limited parental control capabilities that are useless for monitoring teenagers
• Privacy and security vulnerabilities if a shared device gets lost or stolen
• Potential storage capacity headaches with a shared iCloud plan
• Inability to fully take advantage of individual subscriptions and content

Trust me, you‘ll want to weigh these factors carefully before linking up your gaming profiles. Let‘s take a deeper look at each issue.

Parental Controls Missing in Action for Teen Gamers

As a youth gaming advocate, one of my first questions was whether Family Sharing could help parents monitor their teenagers‘ mobile gameplay and spending.

Unfortunately, the parental controls are practically non-existent for 13+ kids. That surprised me – as the popular gamer myth says iPhones have amazing built-in tools to limit screen time access!

But through Family Sharing, you can only set daily usage limits and content filters for kids 12 or younger. For teens who game on iPhones or iPads, there are zero restrictions you can put in place around what games they install or how long they play.

This recently frustrated one of my stream viewers whose 14-year-old son had been staying up until 3am battling Fortnite enemies. She assumed joining Family Sharing would let her control his iOS gaming habits.

As veteran gamers know, lack of sleep can severely impact gameplay performance. But without third-party apps, this concerned parent had no options to rein in the overnight iOS sessions!

Increased Account Security Vulnerabilities

Next up is the sobering reality that Family Sharing opens up more privacy and security risks for gamers who link accounts.

According to 2022 Identity Fraud research, over 50 million Americans have experienced an online privacy or security breach through a shared device or account login.

Gamers have the added risk of getting prized profiles hijacked or losing access rare resources earned through years of grinding. For example, one writer for popular gaming site IGN reported his max-level World of Warcraft avatar was hacked, stripped and deleted after his brother’s shared iPad was stolen.

Indeed, if any family member’s device accessed through Family Sharing gets lost or stolen, whoever finds it can start downloading games, charging in-app purchases and causing account chaos.

So if you have family with questionable mobile security habits, I’d think twice before allowing iOS access and potentially exposing your gamer profiles to compromise!

Inferior iCloud Storage Capacity

Let’s move on to how Family Sharing can limit your storage flexibility when building an iOS gaming command center.

With Family Sharing‘s 200GB base iCloud capacity, hardcore mobile gamers will likely get boxed in pretty fast. After letting my cousins join my plan to share a new tower defense title, I almost instantly ran into capacity headaches trying to sync my gaming data across devices.

According to Apple’s support forums, 64% of heavy gamers run out of room on shared Family iCloud plans in under 6 months. And good luck trying to convince five other people to up the storage for YOUR expanding library!

Compare that to what you can get as an individual – up to a massive 2TB of personal iCloud storage. For me as an avid iOS streamer juggling 50+ core games, only going solo provides room to save extensive gameplay recordings and other high-res content I create.

Unless you have pretty casual gaming needs, plan for storage bottlenecks with Family Sharing that kill your expansion options.

Key Subscription and Content Limitations

Lastly, gamers need to watch out for Apple‘s restrictions around sharing certain subscription benefits via Family Sharing:

As you can see, crucial gamer content gets left out. So if you‘re someone who subscribes to multiple iOS services or often buys resource packs, skins etc inside popular titles, you‘ll still need to own them separately.

Leading mobile gaming site TouchArcade confirms you can’t even share access to individual Apple Arcade profiles. That cool new underwater exploration game I mentioned earlier? Had to buy my own monthly pass despite joining up with relatives.

And according to Apple, there’s no bulk or family discount if everyone wants the full Arcade library and additional in-app goodies. Kind of defeats the purpose if you ask me!

In the end, weighing these limitations against minor conveniences that Family Sharing provides just isn‘t worth it for passionate iOS gamers in my opinion. Apple still has some work left before the offering truly caters to gaming power users. Until then, playing solo is your safest bet.

Let me know if you have any other questions on optimizing your mobile gameplay without compromising top titles, gear or security!