Steam finally improves its family sharing

In beta initially, families Steam are today launched by Valve. This is a set of features designed to replace and improve Family Sharing and Family Mode.

The months pass and, with almost each of them, Steam breaks its record for players connected simultaneously. It must be said that beyond its massive catalog, Valve’s solution is the richest in terms of functionality in the online video game landscape. If we often think of Remote Play in particular, let’s not also forget family sharing, which will soon benefit from a fairly welcome improvement.

Valve clarifies and improves its families system

With this new name, Valve first centralizes family sharing and family mode. Today, the first allows you to share your Steam game library with other contacts, while the second allows parents to prevent children from accessing certain features of the software (store, contacts, games, etc.) using a PIN code.

The main addition to this family mode is undoubtedly parental controls. As illustrated above, this allows you to define authorized games and time slots accessible to children. They can also make a request to purchase a game in the store, to be accepted or not by a parent, who will pay the bill.

A feature still in beta

If you already use Steam family sharing, which allows you to add a maximum of 5 people with whom to share your game library, a few elements may change when Steam families are launched. This number will not change and you will automatically be invited to join a family with the accounts you already share your games with.

On the other hand, the restriction which today requires not playing a borrowed game at the same time as the owner (under penalty of being kicked from the game after five minutes) seems to no longer apply with Steam families. . Valve will also allow you to enjoy someone else’s game library without having to log in. Another improvement: If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple family members can play it at the same time. »

Greater flexibility therefore seems in order, simply hoping that Valve will not play Netflix by monitoring whether the members of a family are indeed physically in the same household. Also watch out for cheating: if a member of a family is banned while playing a shared game, the owner of the game in question will be banned too.

To test this feature now before its beta release:

• head to Steam settings
• then go to Interface
• select Steam Families Beta in Client Beta Participation.

Source : Steam