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Valve gave Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View a facelift on Monday. Now called Steam Families, the combined and revamped feature allows six-person user groups to play each other’s titles, maintain their own saved files and achievements, and play online at the same time. At first glance, the Steam Families beta appears to make library-sharing much smoother than before. But with great sharing power comes great responsibility, and if one member of the “family” screws up and gets banned from a game, the title’s actual owner does, too.
The old Steam Family Sharing framework only allowed one person to access a library at a time. Steam Families takes away that restriction: Now, if you’re playing a game from your sister’s library, your parents can pick another title from that library and play it simultaneously. If two people want to play the same game at the same time, two people in the family need to own the game—though it doesn’t matter who the title belongs to. For instance, if your dad and your sister bought copies of Dave the Diver, you and your mom can play it simultaneously since there are two copies of the game in your collective library.
Speaking of parents, Steam Families introduces new parental controls and “playtime reports.” Guardians can choose in advance which titles their kids can access, set hourly or daily playtime limits, and restrict access to the Steam Store, Community forums, or Friends Chat. Kids can request additional playtime or feature access, and guardians can approve or deny those requests temporarily or permanently. Kids with access to the Steam Store can also put titles in their shopping cart and send a purchase request to their guardian’s phone, where the guardian can choose whether to buy (or decline) the desired game with the tap of a button.
An example of the “playtime reports” Steam Families guardians can opt into.
Credit: Valve
Together, these features make for a more versatile library-sharing experience. But games aren’t the only thing you’ll share with your family here. If someone accessing your library is banned from a game for cheating or some other egregious offense, you—the original owner of that title—will be banned, too. Valve doesn’t detail this policy in its announcement or FAQ page. Still, game license holders are likely considered responsible for their “guests” (and, by extension, their guests’ offenses).
Steam Families also introduces a few key safeguards to prevent users from library-hopping. Once you join a family, you can leave and rejoin as many times as you’d like, but you’ll have to wait a whole year before creating or joining a new family. The slot you leave behind must undergo a one-year “cooldown,” too, before someone else can take your place.
Valve says Steam Families are meant to consist of up to six “close family members.” The company intends to monitor the usage of Steam Families over time, enabling it to “adjust the requirements for participating in a Steam family…to keep usage in line with this intent.” So far, it doesn’t appear Valve will pull a Spotify or a Netflix by asking for family members’ addresses or checking IPs, but this could change anytime.
Steam Families is currently in beta. Those interested in the new framework must opt in through the “Client Beta Participation” drop-down in the “Interface Settings” menu.