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
  • @BoiglenoightEnglish
    6•2 months ago

    Valve can be attributed with saving PC gaming. When people were terrified of buying “digital only” games on this fugly client called Steam—which only had Valve games and a few no name indies—the PC gaming shelves in places like Walmart and EB Games looked like a clearance section. Just a hodgepodge of games in no particular order, worn out looking boxes of new games picked up and put back down, meanwhile the PlayStation and Xbox walls flourished and even GameCube got more love from a merchandising standpoint.

    Now we trust Valve with our digital libraries the way we’d trust a bank with our money. They’ve earned that trust, and I can’t say the same for Sony or Nintendo which are happy to charge you repeatedly for the same game. Microsoft actually does a pretty good job of making your old games still playable in some form, so Kudos to them.

    So will we be surprised when Epic Games Store goes tits up? No. Will we care when we lose all our games? No, they were all free. Should we support Valve as long as they continue to be the champions of PC gaming? You better if you care about where it goes.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•2 months ago

      100% These idiots shit on Valve like the PC marketplace wouldnt be infinitely worse without them. If you truly care about the PC sphere getting better, shit on Valves lack of competition, dont try to tear down the best example we have. That being said I’m hesitant to say ONLY option as at this point GoG and Itch are passable competition, even if what they provide is TINY compared to what Valve has brought the PC Gaming Sphere

      • @BoiglenoightEnglish
        2•2 months ago

        I’ve used GoG. It’s good. Never used Itch.