Steam has announced a new family service called Steam Families, which integrates old and new sharing options for relatives and updates parental controls.
In a Steam blog post about the new family features, the gaming service mentions that up to as many as five players gain access to games that their family members own in their libraries. Users playing shareable games can save their progress, collect Steam achievements, access workshop files, and more.
Players maintain current titles, and new ones will be saved to their collection. Family members can access the feature on Steam clients, web browsers, and mobile devices, and each player’s age range can be set to children or adults.
Steam has also added new parental controls, which give parents control regarding appropriate games for their kids. Parents can limit their children from playing games, using the Steam store, chatting with other friends or members of a community, and more. Guardians can also accept and decline a family member’s request to play a game and the purchase of new games via the shopping cart.
A picture from the blog post shows that each player’s hours can be tracked from daily minutes to the peak hours of gaming. Parents can use this tracker to restrict children from playing late at night.
Users can participate in the Steam Beta by selecting the Steam Families beta in the interface located in an individual’s Steam account settings to access the feature. After opting in, Steam members can head to account details on the store page and click on the family management section to set up their Steam Family.
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