Valve’s new Steam Families feature is now available for everyone following a beta launch earlier this year. With Steam Families, parents are able to share games with their families, manage parental controls for their kids, and approve requests from their kids to buy Steam games.
The big improvement with Steam Families over Valve’s previous Family Sharing setup is that multiple people can play games from a shared library at one time. So if I’m playing Balatro, and my partner, who is part of my Steam Family, wants to play Arranger, we can both play those games at the same time. However, if my partner wants to play Balatro while I’m already playing it, she’ll need to buy an additional copy. With Steam Families, you can play shared games offline, too.
Valve says that Steam Families are “intended to contain your immediate family” and that they can include “up to 6 close family members.” Each member of a Steam Family will have their own save games and earn their own achievements. Adults can leave a Steam Family at any time, but if they do, they’ll have to wait a year before they can start or join a new Family. Children can only be removed by a Steam Family by an adult or with the help of Steam support.
In a video, Valve says that the old Family Sharing feature will be retired “eventually,” so if you’ve been using that, you might want to set up Steam Families instead.
You can start using Steam Families by updating Steam. The newest Steam client update has a handful of other updates, too, including a redesigned screenshots manager.