Valve introduces Steam Families with game sharing and parental controls
Share your Steam games with up to five others in a Steam Family.
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What you need to know
Sharing games with family on Windows PC just got a lot more simple.
Valve isintroducingSteam Families, a new simplified approach that replaces prior sharing options. Available now in the Steam Beta Client, Steam Families allow players to form a Family with up to five others. In a Steam Family, everyone’s games are pooled together, allowing a user to play a game belonging to anyone else.
Adult members in a Steam Family can also use parental controls, setting limitations to approve purchases made by the child members in the family, or restricting the child accounts from accessing the Steam Community features.
Valve notes that you can leave or create a new family, but this is limited to being available once a year. Valve will also be monitoring feedback, meaning the time limit (and the number of players available in a Steam Family) could change over time.
If you’re interested in trying this feature out before it’s widely available, open your Steam account and go toSettings. SelectInterface, thenClient Beta Participation, and then finally selectSteam Family Beta.
What are the limitations of Steam Families sharing games?
A family has as many copies of a game in a library as have actually been purchased. So, if a family of six players has collectively purchased two copies ofStarfield, then two people in the family can play Starfield at once. If someone else in the family then buys the game, three people will be able to play it at once, and so on.
If a game is not currently eligible for the soon-to-be-replaced Family Sharing feature, then it won’t support sharing through Steam Families. There’s also a handful of games that do not support being shared due to technical requirements like having an additional, third-party account.
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Analysis: A cool feature I won’t likely use
This isn’t really for me, especially since I don’t have kids. For those families that do, I imagine this will be a godsend, especially for single-player games where it’s less likely that multiple people will all be wanting to play the same game at the same time. Multiplayer games will be less advantageous, but even so, if a family of six can buy three copies of a game instead of six, it’s a win.
Samuel Tolbert is a freelance writer covering gaming news, previews, reviews, interviews and different aspects of the gaming industry, specifically focusing on Xbox and PC gaming on Windows Central. You can find him on Twitter@SamuelTolbert.
