Valve's Steam Families game sharing feature is now available in beta
Valve has announced that Steam Families, a new ecosystem for sharing games, setting up parental controls, and allowing parents to approve purchases, is now available in the beta version of Steam.
The details:
The new feature will replace Steam's existing Family Sharing and Family View systems, with Valve stating that it will give users a "single location to manage which games (their) family can access and when they can play." It is now available to everyone in the Steam Beta client.
A Steam Family group can have a total of six members and is managed directly through the Steam desktop client or mobile app. Each member will continue to have access to their own achievements, workshop files, and save games.
All members can play each other's shared games, but they must own individual copies if they want to play them simultaneously. This may not be available for all titles in the future, as Valve has stated that developers can opt out of the feature for a variety of reasons.
Traditional parental control features include setting playtime limits, blocking chat functions and inappropriate store pages, and more. Children can also request permission to buy games and add-ons from the store directly, and an adult can simply accept or deny their request.
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