What you need to know
- Steam Families is a new feature allowing Steam players to share games with members of their household.
- Steam Families pool the libraries of each user together, allowing each family member to play a game if there’s a copy of it in the collected library.
- Up to six players can be part of a Steam Family, with Child and Adult accounts that allow the latter to set limitations like parental controls on the former.
- Steam Families is now out of beta testing and is available for everyone to use.
As a seasoned gamer with a brood of young ones who are slowly but surely catching the gaming bug, I can’t help but feel like I’ve struck gold with Steam Families! With a household full of gamers, this feature is nothing short of a game-changer (pun intended). It’s like Valve read my mind and said, “Hey, you know what would be awesome? If all your games were magically shared across every screen in the house!
It’s time to share the means of recreation across your household.
Steam Families is out of beta testing, with Valve originally announcing the feature a few months ago and gathering feedback from testers. Steam Families allows players to create their own digital family of up to six Steam users, pooling everyone’s libraries of games together.
As an example of how it all works, if two players in a Steam Family own a copy of Saber Interactive and Focus Entertainment’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, then any two players in the family can play that game at the same time, but the other members of the family will have to wait until they stop playing. If another member of the family buys a copy, then up to three players can play it at the same time, and so on.
Below, you’ll find a video by Valve that offers additional insights about the concept of Steam Families. Feel free to have a look!
Analysis: A potentially-transformative addition
As I previously expressed upon the unveiling of Steam Families, this isn’t a feature that will greatly benefit me at this point in my life. However, for those with partners and children, this development brings immense joy as it simplifies the process of sharing games within a household significantly. This convenience is particularly noteworthy given the increasing popularity of the Steam Deck, allowing family members to engage in gaming while another uses the primary Windows PC at home.
The feature set like approving purchases and setting parental controls on the types of games that are played seem to address any possible potential concerns around younger children having access to an adult’s game library.
In the official statement, Valve doesn’t specify a fixed number for the maximum users in a Steam Family, suggesting there may be changes ahead. Therefore, we’ll need to observe whether the limit expands past six or contracts below it over time.
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2024-09-12 02:08