After a beta period earlier this year, Steam’s new family sharing system and parental controls hub is now available to everyoneSteam Families replaces both Family Sharing and Family View, providing a single hub for all your game sharing needs.
A Steam Family can consist of up to six members (including yourself), and the entire libraries of all users are available to the ‘family’ unit, except for games where developers have decided not to share for whatever reason. No more feeling guilty about seeing your big brother playing a game you want – you can share the title across multiple devices, but not simultaneously.
The biggest upgrade in Steam’s game-sharing update is the ability for you and your family to play games from your library at the same time. For example, your wife can play your copy of Cyberpunk2077 while you play War zone simultaneously without any problems. And while playing one copy at a time is still a no-go, if there are two copies of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 In your family’s shared library, you can play together with your brother.
With Steam Families, each user has their own save files, earns Steam achievements, has access to workshop files, and more. That’s a lot of freedom for a child on Steam – which is why parental controls are important additions.
Improved parental controls, but it’s not all bad, kids
There are two member (or ‘role’) options within Steam Families – adult and child. Adults can manage member invitations and apply account restrictions, while children are subject to controls set by adults and have no management power.
As an adult, you can decide which games your children can play, restrict their access to the Steam Store, Friends Chat and Community, set play time limits, and recover your child’s account if they lose their password.
Buying games for kids is also easier thanks to Steam Families. Normally, buying a game for a child requires an adult to complete a gift purchase or let them borrow your card. Now, kids have the ability to add games to their cart and then ask an adult to pay for them. The adult can then approve or deny the request via their email or mobile device.
Out with the old, in with the new
Steam Families is an exciting improvement on Steam’s family sharing. For too long, little siblings have had to watch their older siblings take over the PC. Too often, dads have had their accounts locked out in the middle of a run because their kid Terrariumbut that will no longer be the case.
Steam clarifies that the old Family Sharing feature will “eventually be retired.” While this won’t be a problem for most users, it could impact some. For example, the old game sharing feature allowed two (or more) people in different locations to share libraries, but that may no longer be possible.
Steam doesn’t explicitly say that Steam Families will be limited to a single ISP, but terminology like “This information will be available wherever you use Steam, including on your mobile device when you’re away from home” suggests that, like Netflix, it will be limited to a single household.
Either way, this is a huge Steam update that a lot of people will be happy about, though we suspect there are others who will wish for a better game-sharing setup from Valve.