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
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/11954402
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Being able to play game from a single library simultaneously is awesome and how it should’ve been from a usability perspective.
Sadly this change will make it impossible to simply share games with someone specifically, since it’s now required to be in the same Family Share, which is a strong commitment. For sharing games in a single friend group, this change won’t change much (unless someone still wants to share with their family). The changes make game sharing work more like intended, in other words family share.
It was never really meant to be used like that though. They might’ve tolerated it but in the end they can get rid of it while adding further functionality for actual family sharing.
Agreed. The new restrictions are similar to what Spotify is doing with their family plan and is way more useful for it’s intended purpose.
This looks great! It would be even better if they improve the handling of multiple accounts on the steam deck.
Being able to play a game simultaenously is insane news!
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game
That’s a great first step, but I would also like to be able to play another game from my own library on another device (e.g. steam deck and pc) at the same time
You could make a second account, add it to your family, and use one account for your PC and one for your deck.
That’s one possible workaround, but that will, obviously, break stuff like cloud saving and achievement progress. So, not ideal, but probably viable for some situations.
This is incredible news, I’ve been using the deck as a console, and when the kids were playing something I’d be logged out, so this really is a game changer.
Really awesome news!
The previous system was rather arcane - this bodes much better for the father in law that doesn’t know how texting works but does know how RTSes work…
I’m curious how aggressive it will be at limiting families who live in different houses from sharing games.
The article specifically states that it is meant for “same household” families. But will it actively prevent that?
Hopefully, they’re not as aggressive as Netflix - can’t even share a login with the in-laws across the street…
I don’t think so, at least not yet. They might try to prevent it later if it starts getting widely abused.
I could’ve sworn this was already a feature
Am I getting the Mandela effect?
The previous ‘family sharing’ feature allowed for you to share your games with someone else, provided you were not playing any games at the moment.
This new family sharing seems to allow you to share your library even if you’re playing another game.
Maybe now I’ll finally be able to share my library with my partner
You could before, but any games with steam DRM (which is most of them) would lock your library if your spouse was using it.
*Most people could. My library has some kind of fucked issue. Had to reach out to steam support who were absolutely useless.
I hope it will work better than current family. There is so much friction to share one game with your kid that I almost gave up.
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.Fuck that, yo.
Wait, now someone can play a game from my library while Im playing another? That’s huge
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.
If your family library has multiple copies of a game, multiple members of the family can play that game at the same time.
Sounds to me like no, only if you’re playing the same game which you both have copies of (which seems kind of pointless).
Think we can play separate games and not lock others accounts while playing.
Family Sharing enables you to play games from other family members’ libraries, even if they are online playing another game.
Doesn’t work for me. I tried this with my little brother after setting up family sharing. He used to be able to play my games on his account when I wasn’t playing. Now he can’t even do that anymore. Family sharing sucks now.
No, basically all licenses in the family are pooled together. You own game A and B, you can play game A, someone else game B. There are 2 licenses of game A in the family, two people can play it at the same time.
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!
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…
I would say the answer is typically a-parent haha
Not very helpful but I hope a dumb joke makes you smile!
I… honestly did not intend to make that pun. Your dumb joke very much made me smile. Thank you.
