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.

Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.

Features:

  • up to 5 members
  • game sharing
  • parental controls
    • 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
  • child purchase requests
  • @[email protected]English
    227•9 months ago

    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.

    Well this is exceptionally exciting. This potentially solves 100% of my complaints with Family Sharing as it exists currently.

    • @bluedayEnglish
      70•9 months ago

      For REAL!! Not playing same game with one copy makes sense. But the one instance per library was harsh. This is tremendous, and honestly, I’ll probably buy even more games knowing my kids can play them and I can stick to my same old same old if I don’t like it.

      • Lev_AstovEnglish
        7•8 months ago

        Seriously, it’s great to see Valve digging deeper into my heart with improvements to services like this.

    • @Molecular0079English
      51•9 months ago

      No kidding. This solves a major issue with the Steam Deck as well, because now someone else can be playing on the Deck while you use your main PC for another game.

      • @A_Very_Big_FanEnglish
        1•8 months ago

        I have issues with this even with 3rd party applications. Wanna play PokeMMO, an emulator that doesn’t even exist on Steam, on your Steam Deck while you’re waiting to respawn in Trouble in Terrorist Town? Fuck you, you’re disconnected from that server now.

        Guess I’ll just use my phone then, jfc

    • NeatoEnglish
      28•9 months ago

      Yeah. Right now Family Sharing locks down an entire library instead of individual games so this wasn’t possible.