Valve Launches Steam Families For Easier Game Library Sharing With A Few Caveats
Yesterday, Valve posted a Steam blog post outlining the new Steam Families feature, which allows you to bring in up to five family members to manage. Of the sub-features included in this, the first and most exciting is family sharing, wherein “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.” Additionally, family members will not be booted if the main account holder is playing a game.
This will appear as a separate “family library” in your overall Steam library, and with these games, “you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.” Of course, this is limited to whether or not a developer says their game can be shared due to technical or personal reasons.
Beyond the family sharing, Steam Families also introduces some parental controls for Steam, which have long been needed. Parents can set limits on what and when children play games, control access to Steam, get reports on playtime, handle requests for playtime or features, and manage children’s passwords. Children can also request games by sending up a note to a parent in the Steam Family which the parent can approve and pay for the purchase from their device.
There are some overall caveats that users should be aware of, such as the fact that if a family member gets banned for cheating in a game, the game owner will also be banned. However, that should not be a big thing to manage if you are a parent keeping an eye on your kids in game, which given the state of the internet, is a necessary thing.
In any event, this is still a super cool feature to add that will make gaming more easily integrated into the lives of families. If this sounds like something you need, you can join the Steam Family Beta by going into Steam settings, the “Interface” menu, and selecting “Steam Family Beta” from the dropdown of beta options.
