Steam Families Finally Gives Me Features I’ve Wanted for Years!

Valve has just revealed that the new Steam Families is now available for all users. While we’ve been able to share our libraries and enjoy some family features in the past, the system has left a lot to be desired and often locks you out of using a game when the owner of the game is logged in to play something else. Thankfully, that is no longer the case!

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.

To get started, you can create a Steam Family and invite up to 5 family members, of course, I suspect many of you will simply share this with trusted friends too, which certainly makes sense. You can manage your family from your Steam Client, mobile device or web browser. By joining a Steam Family, each member gains access to the following Steam features:

Family Sharing

When you join a Steam Family, 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. The next time you log in to Steam, this new ‘family library’ will appear in the left column as a subsection of your games list.

You maintain ownership of your current titles and when you purchase a new game it will still show up in your collection. Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.

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. For example, say Bill and Ben both have Dragon’s Dogma, But Jack, Jill and Giant don’t, then two of the people who don’t can play Dragon’s Dogma simultaneously through family share and Bill and Ben can still play other Steam games from the family share at the same time.

Parental Controls

Steam Families includes new parental controls that allow parents to set limits on what and when children play games on Steam. You can control which games your children have access to and monitor their activity. This information is available from wherever you access Steam, including your mobile device when you are away from home.

Members of a Steam Family can have one of two roles: adult or child. Any adult family member can manage invites and apply account restrictions. Children are subject to parental controls and do not have permissions to manage the family.

Parental Control Features for Adults:

• 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

We understand a common (and sometimes time-consuming) task for parents is purchasing games for their children. This usually requires that parents complete a gift purchase or let their kids borrow a credit card. To streamline this process, Steam Families introduces a new payment option where a child account can request an in-family adult to pay for their shopping cart. The adult can approve and pay for the purchase from their mobile device or email. Once approved, all games from the shopping cart will be added to the child’s account.

Limitations

Family Sharing is a feature that developers may opt their games out of for technical or other reasons at any time. Visit the Steam Store to see a list of games that currently support Family Sharing.

Tell me More

For FAQ and more details, visit this page.

What do you think of Family Share? I can’t wait to set this up, there are four of us in this house with our own accounts and game collections, so it’s going to make gaming a bit cheaper for all of us!