Valve has finally rolled out Steam Families, a rework of the previous Steam family sharing features; for starters, you can now add up to 5 family members. After a beta testing period that kicked off back in March this year, Valve has officially shared that Steam Families is now live and available for all users. Basically, it’s a collection of new and existing family-related features in one hub.
Steam Families has brought together some important features, which include family sharing, parental controls, and purchase requests made by children.
Steam Families will now let you access shareable games from family members
The highlight of this feature is ‘Family Sharing,’ which lets you play games from your family member’s profile. At the same time, family members can also access the games in your profile.
“Let’s say that you are in a family with 4 members and that you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, any one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life. If two of you would like to play Portal 2 at the same time, someone else in the family will need to purchase a copy of the game,” the official announcement clarifies with an example.
It should be noted that whether a game is shareable or not depends on the game developer. At the moment, all the games that were playable with the Steam Family Sharing feature will be shareable in Steam Families, unless the developer changes this.
Parental Controls
With Steam Families, parents can monitor children’s activities on Steam and even set restrictions. With this, parents can:
- Allow access to appropriate games
- Set hourly and daily playtime limits
- Get playtime reports
- Approve or deny requests for additional playtime and other access
- Limit access to the Steam Store, Community, or Friends Chat
- Recover child account passwords
Further, it should be noted that child accounts cannot manage Steam Families. They cannot add or remove accounts or leave the Steam Family.
Child Purchase Requests
To streamline the purchasing process, Steam Families has introduced a ‘Child Purchase Request’ feature. With this, a child account can request a purchase, which will be added to an adult account’s cart. The adult member of the family can then complete the purchase, and the game will be added to the child’s account.
As mentioned, a user can add up to five family members in a Steam Family, which brings the total number to six. Further, a user can assign one of the two roles to members – adult and child.
