Steam :: Steam News :: Introducing Steam Families
steamcommunity.com
Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families, available today in the Steam Beta Client. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play. Create a Steam Family To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.

When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. The next time you log in to Steam, this new ‘family library’ will appear in the left column as a subsection of your games list. You maintain ownership of your current titles and when you purchase a new game it will still show up in your collection.

Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.

Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time. For a more detailed look at how Family Sharing works, see the FAQ below.

Also adds parental controls for children’s accounts. Parental controls let you:

  • Allow access to appropriate games
  • Restrict access to the Steam Store, Community or Friends Chat
  • Set playtime limits (hourly/daily)
  • View playtime reports
  • Approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
  • Recover a child’s account if they lost their password

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/11954402

  • Chewy
    60·
    8 months ago

    Being able to play game from a single library simultaneously is awesome and how it should’ve been from a usability perspective.

    Sadly this change will make it impossible to simply share games with someone specifically, since it’s now required to be in the same Family Share, which is a strong commitment. For sharing games in a single friend group, this change won’t change much (unless someone still wants to share with their family). The changes make game sharing work more like intended, in other words family share.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
      26·
      8 months ago

      It was never really meant to be used like that though. They might’ve tolerated it but in the end they can get rid of it while adding further functionality for actual family sharing.

      • Chewy
        6·
        8 months ago

        Agreed. The new restrictions are similar to what Spotify is doing with their family plan and is way more useful for it’s intended purpose.