Steam Families, a collection of new and existing family-related features that replaces Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View to give what Valve says is a single location for players to manage what games their family can access and when they can play, is now officially live following beta testing, Valve has announced. The new feature, which includes Parental Controls and Child Purchase Requests, comes with at least one caveat, however, in that game owners may find themselves banned from a game if a family member is caught cheating.
Valve writes:
- “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.”
- “…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.”
- “…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.”
A promo for the new feature:
Valve on Parental Controls and Child Purchase Requests:
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.
Steam Families [also] 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.
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Discussion (5 replies)
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For many years my friends, family and I have used the Steam library family sharing shiznit to let each other play our Steam games. I guess it's sort of the digital equivalent of letting a friend borrow a physical copy of a game. The system had it's fair share of issues though. And the sharing privileges would get "reset" once in a while and have to be re-done. It also needed to be redone if you got a new PC, or at least a fresh OS install. I don't yet know how this new system works, but I hope it works out a lot f*cking better than the old system.
Been using it for a month now and it has worked perfectly so far.
I really wish they'd let you play a single game across PC's (LAN Party style) using one Steam account. I'm going to host a LAN party here soon and that sure would be helpful.
I like the idea of Steam Sharing, but what always hung me up - it wouldn't work if the "Owner" account was playing any game in their Steam library.
I could get not wanting 2 people playing the same game at the same time. But if my wife is playing Peggle and I want to try out her copy of Star Wars, I couldn't do it until she stopped playing Peggle. And she never stops playing Peggle.
Maybe they have fixed this since, but it was what kept me from using it further back when it first came out.
Limiting the number of slots to 6 people in a family, and limiting people to being in one family at a time, are gonna be some annoying-@ss restrictions.
"Niner51, post: 89327, member: 106" wrote:I really wish they'd let you play a single game across PC's (LAN Party style) using one Steam account. I'm going to host a LAN party here soon and that sure would be helpful.
Yupz, definitely ran into issues like that too. One thing I did when my brother and I played through a few Halo games in Halo MCC via LAN was that I would log in, switch to offline mode, and then he would use my copy of Halo MCC. So we were both using my copy.
I miss the days of games like StarCraft allowing you to make "spawn copies" for LANParty multiplayer use.
"Brian_B, post: 89335, member: 96" wrote:I like the idea of Steam Sharing, but what always hung me up - it wouldn't work if the "Owner" account was playing any game in their Steam library.
I could get not wanting 2 people playing the same game at the same time. But if my wife is playing Peggle and I want to try out her copy of Star Wars, I couldn't do it until she stopped playing Peggle. And she never stops playing Peggle.
Maybe they have fixed this since, but it was what kept me from using it further back when it first came out.
They changed it a bit with the new system so that now if you if your wife if playing Peggle and you want to try her copy of SW, you can, because the entire library is no longer locked out, just that copy of the game. So you can't play Peggle while she is, but you can play something else of her's.
But if multiple people in your family want to use her copy of a game, only one of them can at a time. If more than one person in the family owns a game, then that means more copies can be shared. So if two people in your Steam Family own Peggle, two non-owners in the same family can both play it.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →For many years my friends, family and I have used the Steam library family sharing shiznit to let each other play our Steam games. I guess it's sort of the digital equivalent of letting a friend borrow a physical copy of a game. The system had it's fair share of issues though. And the sharing privileges would get "reset" once in a while and have to be re-done. It also needed to be redone if you got a new PC, or at least a fresh OS install. I don't yet know how this new system works, but I hope it works out a lot f*cking better than the old system.
Been using it for a month now and it has worked perfectly so far.
I really wish they'd let you play a single game across PC's (LAN Party style) using one Steam account. I'm going to host a LAN party here soon and that sure would be helpful.
I like the idea of Steam Sharing, but what always hung me up - it wouldn't work if the "Owner" account was playing any game in their Steam library.
I could get not wanting 2 people playing the same game at the same time. But if my wife is playing Peggle and I want to try out her copy of Star Wars, I couldn't do it until she stopped playing Peggle. And she never stops playing Peggle.
Maybe they have fixed this since, but it was what kept me from using it further back when it first came out.
Limiting the number of slots to 6 people in a family, and limiting people to being in one family at a time, are gonna be some annoying-@ss restrictions.
Yupz, definitely ran into issues like that too. One thing I did when my brother and I played through a few Halo games in Halo MCC via LAN was that I would log in, switch to offline mode, and then he would use my copy of Halo MCC. So we were both using my copy.
I miss the days of games like StarCraft allowing you to make "spawn copies" for LANParty multiplayer use.
They changed it a bit with the new system so that now if you if your wife if playing Peggle and you want to try her copy of SW, you can, because the entire library is no longer locked out, just that copy of the game. So you can't play Peggle while she is, but you can play something else of her's.
But if multiple people in your family want to use her copy of a game, only one of them can at a time. If more than one person in the family owns a game, then that means more copies can be shared. So if two people in your Steam Family own Peggle, two non-owners in the same family can both play it.