Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families, available today in the Steam Beta Client. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play. Create a Steam Family To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.
When you join a Steam Family, you automatically gain access to the shareable games that your family members own and they will also be able to access the shareable titles in your library. The next time you log in to Steam, this new ‘family library’ will appear in the left column as a subsection of your games list. You maintain ownership of your current titles and when you purchase a new game it will still show up in your collection.
Best of all, when you are playing a game from your family library, you will create your own saved games, earn your own Steam achievements, have access to workshop files and more.
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game. If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time. For a more detailed look at how Family Sharing works, see the FAQ below.
Also adds parental controls for children’s accounts. Parental controls let you:
Allow access to appropriate games
Restrict access to the Steam Store, Community or Friends Chat
Set playtime limits (hourly/daily)
View playtime reports
Approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
Recover a child’s account if they lost their password
With cooldowns for abuse prevention now on the table, I wish Valve will consider adding something like a “day pass” for Steam friends where they can share their libraries—or perhaps specific games—for a short duration to someone they know without having to adopt them.
With cooldowns they would find appropriate, of course. And I hope that isn’t a whole year…
What happens if my brother gets banned for cheating while playing my game?
If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.
That’s actually nothing new, it’s been like that with family sharing for ages. If the family share account gets banned, the owner of the game gets banned as well* so that they can’t keep making alt accounts to bypass the ban. Others in your family not being impacted by the ban would actually be an improvement - it used to be that if the owner is banned, anyone family sharing the game would be as well.
*There are exceptions with a few games, like Dark Souls 3, which doesn’t ban your main account so you can use family share to play mods in coop. Elden Ring bans both, however.
I understand why, and it makes sense to me. But I wouldn’t want to take that chance.
It’s not so much that I know a family member would knowingly cheat, but who knows if a friend might convince them to try a mod or something, and not know it could potentially get them banned, ya know?
I get you.
Here’s hoping this new thing allows them to make it work better eventually, as the current system is a result of the older family share system - before the owner banning was implemented plenty of games just disabled family sharing entirely as a workaround for ban evasion.
Right now I believe the only workaround would be to use the parental controls to not share those games you care about enough.
Being able to gift games, parental controls, etc. Plenty of other reasons to set this up. As long as we’d be able to just not share games in case this happened, I’d be cool with that.
If you have a Steam family with 4 members each owning a copy of a game, and the 5th member that doesn’t gets banned. Which of the 4 accounts gets banned?
Since the game copies are “pooled” in the family, you are not sharing from anyone in particular, you have all games in the family available. So who gets banned?
For sure, all of us who have been waiting to fall in love, get married, and have kids, are now free to do so now that we have better steam library sharing. I know it was the main thing most people have been waiting for.
I set family sharing up a while ago. It’s been great. Only issue is I made my own account a child account and don’t mnow how to undo that. Not a huge deal since I know the pin, just sucks to have to put it in to look at the store or appear online to play with friends. Probably not a steam problem, just user error, and if I put enough effort into fixing it as I did writing this comment I probably would have already fixed it. The answer just doesn’t seem apparent…
It’s definitely possible, I recently turned off child mode for my kid now that he’s older. Unfortunately I don’t remember the process well enough to accurately tell you what to do.
I would assume so too, jw. Cause I know if you buy a game and play it and refund it, if you buy it again the saved data and achievements and stuff is still there.
It also allows you to own multiple copies of the same game, which is another huge step in regards to parental controls. If you and both of your kids enjoy a game, you can buy three copies for your account and set restrictions on when/how long they can use it.
I don’t think it does. It allows 3 members to play if there are 3 copies in the family, but each account can still only have 1 copy. You can’t buy 3 copies for your account.
Only complaint is that it makes it harder to share with siblings that occasionally play games while also sharing with friends that more regularly do. Makes it less a venn diagram and more segregated boxes.
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With cooldowns for abuse prevention now on the table, I wish Valve will consider adding something like a “day pass” for Steam friends where they can share their libraries—or perhaps specific games—for a short duration to someone they know without having to adopt them.
With cooldowns they would find appropriate, of course. And I hope that isn’t a whole year…
Too bad that if my kid cheats I will be banned too. :(
Fuck that, yo.
That’s probably to avoid someone buying a game, and then cheating on a child account to avoid bans.
yeah necessary rule fsure
That’s actually nothing new, it’s been like that with family sharing for ages. If the family share account gets banned, the owner of the game gets banned as well* so that they can’t keep making alt accounts to bypass the ban. Others in your family not being impacted by the ban would actually be an improvement - it used to be that if the owner is banned, anyone family sharing the game would be as well.
*There are exceptions with a few games, like Dark Souls 3, which doesn’t ban your main account so you can use family share to play mods in coop. Elden Ring bans both, however.
I understand why, and it makes sense to me. But I wouldn’t want to take that chance.
It’s not so much that I know a family member would knowingly cheat, but who knows if a friend might convince them to try a mod or something, and not know it could potentially get them banned, ya know?
I get you.
Here’s hoping this new thing allows them to make it work better eventually, as the current system is a result of the older family share system - before the owner banning was implemented plenty of games just disabled family sharing entirely as a workaround for ban evasion.
Right now I believe the only workaround would be to use the parental controls to not share those games you care about enough.
Being able to gift games, parental controls, etc. Plenty of other reasons to set this up. As long as we’d be able to just not share games in case this happened, I’d be cool with that.
Not for me.
My kiddo is kinda an butthead and I know he will absolutely figure out how to get banned.
If you have a Steam family with 4 members each owning a copy of a game, and the 5th member that doesn’t gets banned. Which of the 4 accounts gets banned?
Since the game copies are “pooled” in the family, you are not sharing from anyone in particular, you have all games in the family available. So who gets banned?
Is there a non-zero chance you’d add a potential cheater to your Steam family?
Nice! Now, all I need to do is make the babies.
For sure, all of us who have been waiting to fall in love, get married, and have kids, are now free to do so now that we have better steam library sharing. I know it was the main thing most people have been waiting for.
I set family sharing up a while ago. It’s been great. Only issue is I made my own account a child account and don’t mnow how to undo that. Not a huge deal since I know the pin, just sucks to have to put it in to look at the store or appear online to play with friends. Probably not a steam problem, just user error, and if I put enough effort into fixing it as I did writing this comment I probably would have already fixed it. The answer just doesn’t seem apparent…
It’s definitely possible, I recently turned off child mode for my kid now that he’s older. Unfortunately I don’t remember the process well enough to accurately tell you what to do.
Anybody know if I set that up and decide to buy the game myself if my played time, achievements, and saved games will transfer over?
I would assume it will.
I would assume so too, jw. Cause I know if you buy a game and play it and refund it, if you buy it again the saved data and achievements and stuff is still there.
I was so hopeful… pretty much useless for me as I live in a different country to my family.
Wait, now someone can play a game from my library while Im playing another? That’s huge
Also no need authorize each machine, and games are shared in both directions.
Same thoughts. Mainly because it’s such a pain to explain how the library access system works in the previous family share.
Now just need to be able to ‘hide’ some games from sharing and we are good to go!
You can.
Looks like this might only be possible by setting the other accounts to being child accounts.
I’m pretty sure you can set games as private now, but it sure took them some time.
It’s not clear if that hides games from being shared. The info page explicitly states that ALL eligible games are shared.
To get control of what an account can and cannot see/play, the account has to be configured as a child.
I marked some games as private and they indeed do NOT show up on the other families users library. Seems to work like a charm!
Gonna be complicated to explain to my brother why he has to be a child account lol
Just let him see your hentai games, say they’re “jokes” or something.
Yes I have 2500+ hours of playtime for Femboy Adventures: The Catboi Chronicles, but that’s just a joke, bro
Virgin embarrassed H-game enthusiast:
Chad owns-up-to-it H-game enjoyer:
The Q.A. page specifies that you can specify what games are shared or shown using the normal means.
It also allows you to own multiple copies of the same game, which is another huge step in regards to parental controls. If you and both of your kids enjoy a game, you can buy three copies for your account and set restrictions on when/how long they can use it.
Does it? I assumed it works like this but I could be wrong.
Three out of five members in the family has the same game. That means three people in the family can play that game at the same time.
I don’t think it does. It allows 3 members to play if there are 3 copies in the family, but each account can still only have 1 copy. You can’t buy 3 copies for your account.
Only complaint is that it makes it harder to share with siblings that occasionally play games while also sharing with friends that more regularly do. Makes it less a venn diagram and more segregated boxes.