Steam is rolling out Steam Families, a new system allowing you to share a library of games with your family for free, but also to launch several titles at the same time. A very practical tool which should further improve the popularity of the platform.
Steam is the most popular and complete digital video game distribution platform on the market, whether for casual players or passionate gamers. It is based on a friendly community where sharing reigns. For several years, the launcher has offered a family sharing function. Thus, it is possible to play on different machines with the same Steam library, but not at the same time. In addition, by configuring your library with the account of a loved one, Valve authorizes the latter’s access to the titles in this library, provided that its owner is not himself in the game. In any case, if someone someone else launches one of the shared games, we are automatically disconnected in the middle of the game. Suffice to say that it is not very practical, especially for the most active players. Fortunately, Steam has decided to review this operation and announces the deployment of Steam Families (“Steam families” in French). This is a set of functions resulting from the merger between family sharing and parental protection of “family mode”. And the result looks very promising!
Steam Families: a much more practical sharing function
A Steam family can have up to five members. Family Sharing allows you to play titles from other family members’ libraries, even if the owner of the title is playing something else online, without needing an Internet connection. The Steam Families FAQ gives a concrete example of this new operation: “Suppose you are part of a family of 4 members and you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life. If two of you want to play Portal 2 at the same time, another family member will need to purchase a copy of the game. After this purchase, there will be two copies of Portal 2 in the family and two members can play at the same time “. Even better: each member of the family group is entitled to their own game saves, gets their own Steam achievements and has individual access to Steam Workshop files. Be careful though: games can only be shared if their developer has not chosen to withdraw from the Steam Families program.
Steam Families offers a new set of parental control tools. Members designated as “adults” can monitor and manage game access for accounts registered as “children”. The former can restrict children’s access to games, the store, community functions and chat. They can also view playtime reports and set limits, approve children’s requests for additional access to playtime or features, and retrieve children’s accounts. The process of purchasing games for children is also simplified. Instead of needing an adult to buy them a gift card to spend, kids will now be able to put the desired game in their cart and then have the adults in the family group pay for it. Parents will then be able to approve and pay for the purchase from their own account.
Steam Families: how to take advantage of the new sharing system?
The new Steam Families feature is currently available in the Steam Beta feature. To try it, open the launcher and click on the main icon at the top left to go to Settings. Then go to theInterface and click Participation in customer beta. Finally, select Steam Families Beta.
Then restart the Steam client as requested. Downloading the update with the beta should follow. To create a family, go to the store page, click on your profile, then click Account details. Go to Family management. And there you have it, you can now invite other people to join your family group!
Please note that children are not allowed to leave their Steam family, only adults in the family and Steam Support can remove them. Additionally, adults can leave a family at any time, but will have to wait one year from the time they joined the previous family to create or join a new family.