Steam Families is finally here and lets players share their games with others inside their homes much more easily than before.
The updated feature just got out of beta and into full launch to allow simultaneous playing of a lot of games available on Valve's platform. It was previously somewhat difficult to play together as you had to choose who would be playing what and when.
New Steam Families
Steam Families now lets you use up to five family member accounts to play games from a shared library at the same time. Each one will be using its own save file for the games that it plays.
However, there are some limitations, similar to how Netflix, Disney+, and many other services have cracked down on password sharing outside of the home. Valve also detailed in a news post how the system would work, according to Gizmodo.
The first thing you need to do is to join a family group and each other person in that family will gain access to your backlog of games. However, you will still need two copies of a game to play it at the same time.
The good news is that the new Steam Families will let individual group members have their own save games and collect their own Steam achievements or Steam Workshop mod subscriptions.
The new feature is automatically enabled by default to make it convenient for players to share their games. There are also some new parent controls introduced with the arrival of Steam Families, said EsportsIllustrated.
These were introduced in order to allow parents to better monitor various things about their kids' play habits on Steam. They will now see a detailed breakdown of what specific hours of the day their children played which games and how many hours in total were spent.
Easier Sharing System
Some of the other features also let parents allow access to appropriate games, restrict access to the Steam Store, Community, or Friends Chat, set playtime limits, view playtime reports, and many others.
Valve also talked about a game's eligibility for Steam Families, noting that the decision was up to the developer. It noted that they are in control of whether or not to let their titles be eligible for sharing with the new feature.
The post said that all developer settings for the previous Steam Family Sharing feature are being brought into Steam Families. This means that if a game is currently eligible for Family Sharing, then it will be available for the new system, according to Rock Paper Shotgun.
