Steam :: Steam News :: Introducing Steam Families
steamcommunity.com
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.

Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.

Features:

  • up to 5 members
  • game sharing
  • parental controls
    • 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
  • child purchase requests
  • SpedwellEnglish
    1214·
    7 months ago7 months ago

    Sigh… I’m getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They also abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn’t absolve them of the second.

    Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don’t know what we’re missing.

    To learn more about Steam’s anticompetitive practices:

      • SpedwellEnglish
        113·
        7 months ago7 months ago

        “Platform Most Favored Nation”. It’s a type of clause in platform/marketplace agreements that prohibit a seller from listing their product for a lower price on a different sales platform. Specifically, it prevents selling on a different marketplace with lower fees (e.g. Epic Games or a publishers own website) and passing the difference as savings to the consumer.

        • ALostInquirerEnglish
          40·
          7 months ago

          Oh, I hadn’t read of it in that form, thanks!

        • mightyfoolishEnglish
          20·
          7 months ago7 months ago

          Doesn’t Amazon have the same stipulation on every item listed on their site?

          Edit: I think I misunderstood you here. I thought Amazon’s game division was complaining about Steam. That would have been very hypocritical.

    • mightyfoolishEnglish
      50·
      7 months ago

      Epic gives me free games and I still don’t like them… The “problem” is Valve is Steam-rolling the competition because people want to give them money.

      • SpedwellEnglish
        32·
        7 months ago

        Yep. Because honestly, Steam is better than Epic in almost every way. When you want to buy a particular game X, you get a lot more from your purchase if it’s on Steam (workshop, friends, multiplayer, etc.). There is strong inertia and network effects that keep us all preferring Steam.

        Epic can’t compete with the Steam experience. But if Epic was able to list everything 18% cheaper (the difference in fees between Epic and Steam)—then they would rightly be able to compete on price.

        • mightyfoolishEnglish
          20·
          7 months ago

          I understand now and that does make sense. No point in undercutting your competition if you can’t pass those savings to the customers.