Image: Valve
Steam is improving how family sharing works via the new Steam Families beta.
Valve has announced Steam Families, a new feature that improves upon the platform’s parental controls and game sharing all at once. The most impactful change introduced is that multiple users can now use one game library at the same time, though they still have to play different games. Additionally, buying games for kids and fiddling with parental controls is now a lot easier.
Valve introduces Steam Families
Valve has unveiled Steam Families, a collection of new and existing family-related features that will replace Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View. All you need to do to get access to these features is create a Steam Family and invite up to five family members. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to share games with everyone in the family automatically. Users in a Steam Family will have a new ‘family library’, wherein they can play games other users own but retain their own save files, achievements and so on.
There is a caveat, however: two people will not be able to play the same game at the same time, unless two copies of that game exist within the same Steam Family. Here’s the example Valve uses to explain how this works:
Of course! Let's say that you are in a family with 4 members and that you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, any one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life. If two of you would like to play Portal 2 at the same time, someone else in the family will need to purchase a copy of the game. After that purchase, there are two owned copies of Portal 2 across the family and any two members can play at the same time.
As for parental controls, Steam Family members can either take the role of an adult or child. Adult users can apply parental control restrictions to children’s accounts, controlling which games they play and monitoring their activity. Parents can set playtime limits, restrict their kids’ access to Steam messaging and so on, even through the Steam app on their phone. Children can also now request for an adult to pay for their shopping carts, at which point the adult can simply approve and pay for the cart through their email or phone.
To join the Steam Family Beta, you can access Steam’s settings menu and look for the ‘Client Beta Participation’ option under ‘Interface’. Find more details here.
