Steam Families Rolls Out to All Users: Exploring the Ups and Downs

After successful beta testing, Valve has officially rolled out Steam Families to all Steam users, bringing exciting changes to how families can play together.

Steam Families lets you create a group of up to six people who can all access a shared game library at the same time. When playing shared games, each person earns their own achievements and has their own saved game data.

If your family owns multiple copies of a game, several of you can play that same game together. It’s perfect for those multiplayer nights when everyone wants to join in on the fun.

For parents, Steam Families comes with some handy tools. You can set limits on what games your kids can access, control their playtime, and even manage their access to Steam’s store and community features. It’s all about giving parents more control over their kids’ gaming habits.

Here is how it works:

Valve announces Steam Families featuring game sharing, parental controls, and child purchase requests. #Steam #Valve #ParentalControls pic.twitter.com/tCucuyxEu3

— Shacknews (@shacknews) September 11, 2024

However, it’s not all smooth sailing. There are a few catches to be aware of. First off, all family members need to be in the same country. So if you were hoping to share games with your cousin overseas, you’re out of luck.

Also, if someone in your family gets caught cheating in a game, the game owner could get banned too. Yikes!

Another thing to note is that once you leave a family group, you’ll have to wait a whole year before you can join or create a new one.

Some folks are also a bit worried about privacy, especially when it comes to more adult-oriented games in their library. But don’t worry – Steam lets you keep certain games private if you don’t want to share them with the whole family.

Despite these hiccups, most gamers seem pretty excited about Steam Families.

Here are the brief pros and cons I have noted:

Pros:

• Multiple family members can play multiple games from a shared library simultaneously.
• If a family owns multiple copies of a game, multiple members can play that same game at the same time.
• Each person can collect their own achievements for games in the family library.
• Improves upon the previous system where only one person could use a shared library at a time.
• Adults can monitor and limit what children in the group can do on the platform.
• Adults can restrict kids’ access to Steam’s store, communities, or chat.
• Adults can recover a child’s account if the password is lost.
• Enables playing shared games in offline mode.

Cons:

• Limited to users in the same country, preventing sharing with family or friends abroad.
• Restricted to a group of up to 6 people, which may not accommodate larger families or friend groups.
• All members must be part of the same “family” group, limiting flexibility in sharing arrangements, especially with friends.
• One-year cooldown period before joining another family after leaving one.
• If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing a shared game, the game owner also gets banned.
• Some users worry about the potential loss of the PIN code security feature from the old Family View.
• Concerns about how Valve will verify that users are from the same household.
• Not all games support family sharing due to technical limitations or developer opt-outs.
• Potential issues with sharing NSFW games within a family library (though this can be managed by setting games as private).

For more information, read all Steam FAQs. And remember to subscribe to Gaming Foodle for more news!