Steam Families adds many more features for those who share their game libraries

As more people get Steam Decks and other portable PC consoles, which can be shared among households much more easily than a PC, it’s been integral for Valve to make the usually barebones family sharing setup more robust. The company announced this on Monday Steam Families is available now in beta, adding more features for people who want to share games or control access on the platform.

Steam Families allows a user to share their library with up to five other “family members” (or whoever you share your PC or Steam Deck with). Once you join a family, you automatically gain access to games owned by the members, with the exception of titles where the developers have not opted into the program. You can also play games from someone else’s library, even if they’re playing something else online. So when you’re playing Helldivers 2, a family member can board Balatro at the same time.

Steam currently has two family features. These are Family Sharing, which lets you share games with your family members, and Family View, which lets you grant parental controls. However, Family View lacks many features that other parental control systems have. Users could choose whether to share all games or just the games they chose, and access to features such as the store and friends lists was restricted. These can all be changed with a PIN code. The new Steam Families will combine these two existing family features, allowing users to not only share games, but also control how these games can be accessed more easily.

Valve has added some more options here. In addition to the above features, adults can now restrict access to inappropriate games and set playing time limits for children. Steam now also offers playtime reports that show how many minutes a user has played. A child can send a request to increase these limits or purchase a title from the store, which the parent can accept or decline.

Steam Families is currently only available in the Steam Beta Client. There’s no word on when it will be available to the general public, but once it is available, Steam will automatically recommend people to join your family.