Steam Families, a replacement for Steam’s existing Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View features, is now available for testing as part of the latest Steam Beta Client, Valve has announced. As described by Valve, Steam Families serves as a single location where users can manage what games their family can access (and when they can play), but some critics have already begun pointing out some of the new limitations that Valve has implemented, which reportedly include region-locked sharing.
Steam Families includes:
- FAMILY SHARING
- …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
- You maintain ownership of your current titles and when you purchase a new game it will still show up in your collection
- …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
- …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
- 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
- …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
But there are some caveats, per Valve’s FAQ:
- Adults can leave a family at any time, however, they will need to wait 1 year from when they joined the previous family to create or join a new family.
- …each Steam Family slot has a cooldown of one year before a new member can occupy that slot.
- …adult family members can kick any family member out of the Steam Family.
- If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.
Critics are saying:
- “its region lock guys”
- “Good job, you made it infinetelly worse with the region lock, proving once again that piracy is better and that your words don’t mean jack”
- “So the moment my brother is out of the country he’s not family anymore? That’s weird.”
- “european families who live near eachother but in different countries and people with loved ones and relatives in other countries can no longer share games”
- “Sounds good except for the one year thing and the ban thing. If I marry into another family, I have to wait a year to create one if I had a family set up with 6 members.”
How to join the Steam Family Beta:
- While Steam is running, click on Steam upper left, then choose the “Settings” menu.
- Select Interface, then under “Client Beta Participation” select the dropdown menu
- Select Steam Family Beta from the drop down list, and click OK. You’ll be prompted to restart Steam at this point.
Valve on its updated Family Sharing feature:
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.