Valve Reveals New Steam Sharing Feature

gamerant.com:

PC gaming giant Valve has announced a new sharing feature for Steam, which should allow players on the platform to share games with their loved ones. It's calling the feature Steam Families, and it's currently in testing on Steam beta clients.

While physical media in games is far from dead, the gaming market is increasingly dominated by digital sales and distribution. Unfortunately, digital platforms tend to vary in how convenient they make it to share one's games with other users, sparking headaches and frustration. This can be particularly true for parents, who often need to juggle multiple accounts for themselves and their children and manage game sharing while still trying to protect them from inappropriate titles, some of which are sold on the same marketplaces as family-friendly ones.

It's this scene that Valve has stepped into by announcing Steam Families, a new feature that is available for users who opt into the Steam Beta Client. Once it leaves beta and is implemented across the whole Steam ecosystem, Steam Families will consolidate and replace the current Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View features. Currently, on the standard, non-beta Steam client, Steam Family Sharing allows a Steam user on a shared computer to view, request, and grant access to games installed in the libraries of other uses. Meanwhile, Steam Family View is a parental control feature, allowing adults to create Steam accounts for children and manage game access based on content, such as hiding inappropriate content or creating libraries of family friendly games.

Users on the current beta Steam client will be able to create their own Steam Family, adding up to five members via Steam, mobile device, or browser. Members of the same Steam Family can play shareable games that other members of the family own automatically, via a «family library.» Players can even play their family members' games, even while those members are online playing a different game. The main restriction is that