Valve's new Steam Families feature is Now available for everyone Following the launch of a beta earlier this year, Steam Families allows parents to share games with their families, manage parental controls for their children, and approve their children's requests to purchase Steam games.
The big improvement to Steam Families over Valve's previous family sharing setup is that multiple people can play games from a shared library at once. So if I'm playing Balatroand my partner, who is part of my Steam family, wants to play Arranger, We can play those games both at the same time. However, if my partner wants to play Balatro While I'm already playing, she'll have to buy an additional copy. With Steam Families, you can also play shared games offline.
Valve says Steam families are “meant to contain your immediate family” and can include “up to 6 closest 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 from a Steam family by an adult or with the help of Steam Support.
In A videoValve says the old Family Sharing feature will be retired “eventually,” so if you've been using it, you may want to set up Steam Families instead.
You can start using Steam Families by updating Steam. The latest Steam client update has A handful of other updatesIt also includes a redesigned screenshot manager.