By Sagar V. Mankar Are you tired of fighting with your kids over video game time limits? Frustrated by the lack of control over what games they can access?
Well, Valve has heard your cries and introduced an incredible new feature called Steam Families to help make gaming a more family-friendly experience.
What is Steam Families?
Steam Families is a centralized hub that combines Valve’s previous Family Sharing and Family View features into one convenient place.
It allows you to create a “Steam Family” with up to 5 other members to share games, where adult members have full control, while child accounts have restrictions.
What Parental Controls are Included?
One of the biggest draws of Steam Families is the robust parental control options for monitoring and limiting your child’s gaming. As a parent, you can:
- Control which games your child can access
- Restrict usage of the Steam store, community, and chat
- Set daily/hourly playtime limits
- View detailed playtime reports
- Approve or deny requests for more playtime
The child purchase approval process is also streamlined. Kids can request game purchases which adults can then approve and pay for remotely from email or mobile.
Sharing Your Games with Family
One of the biggest draws of Steam Families is the game-sharing capabilities.
- Once you create a family, all members automatically gain access to each other’s “shareable” game libraries. No more having to buy multiple copies of the same popular titles!
- The family library shows up as a separate list in your Steam client.
- When playing shared games, each person earns their own achievements and has their own saved game data.
- Multiple family members can even play the same shared game simultaneously if there are enough owned copies.
However, it’s important to note that developers can opt their games out of sharing at any time.
Most games do allow sharing, but some with third-party keys or subscriptions may be ineligible.
The catch? If a family member gets banned for cheating in one of your shared games, you’ll be banned too. So choose who you share with carefully!
What About Existing Family Settings?
If you previously used Steam’s older family features, no worries! Valve will automatically transfer any Family View parental control settings to Steam Families when you create a new family. Slick!
In Conclusion…
Steam Families brilliantly combines family sharing and parental oversight tools into one thoughtful package.
Whether ensuring little Timmy doesn’t play too much Grand Theft Auto or sharing game libraries to save money, this feature offers awesome versatility.
To get started with Steam Families, just opt into the beta and visit the Family Management section. Detailed setup instructions can be found on Valve’s website.