Valve’s Steam Families overhaul has launched out of beta

thesixthaxis.com:

Valve has launched their broad overhaul to the family game sharing in Steam with the new Steam Families system. This replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, and will require you to set up your family group anew, but gives renewed flexibility for a lot of multi-user gaming situations.

A family group gives members access to Family Sharing, Parental Controls and the new Child Purchase Requests.

The biggest change for Steam Family Sharing is that, instead of sharing a single person’s library, it now brings together up to six people and all of their combined games. All of their owned games are still individually owned and purchased, but are pooled together in a game library which can be played on a game-by-game and license-by-license basis – so if two people own the same game, then any two family members can play that game at the same time. Additionally, someone can play a family member’s game, even if another game is being played.

The biggest thing to be aware of, if you join a family group, is that if you leave a group, you cannot join another family for one year – you can go back to the last family group, though, without waiting.

There are also limits to the game library, with developers and publishers able to exclude their games from Family Sharing, just as they could with the old system. Most are included, though. You can view all games tagged with ‘Family Sharing’ here, which shows the very latest games like Space Marine 2 and Black Myth: Wukong included. You can also filter your existing library to see what’s available to share.

Further to game sharing are parental controls, with adults able to manage and control child account access through restricting access to Steam features, setting age gates, playtime limits (with reporting, and the ability to approve or deny requests for temporary access. New Child Purchase Requests let kids ask for a game or DLC purchase via Steam, which is then approved and paid for by the adult, but added to the child’s