Valve introduces Steam Families

quote:

---

Steam, the popular gaming platform, has just unveiled a new feature called Steam Families, now available in the Steam Beta Client. This large collection of family-centric features replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, consolidating all family-related functionalities into one convenient location.

Users can create a Steam Family and invite up to five family members to join. The only requirement is to ‘adopt’ family members from the same country; otherwise this will not work. You can easily manage the family using Steam Client, mobile devices, or a Steam website.

Similarly to what we had in Family Sharing, the Steam Family comes with benefits of allowing members to share games with each other. The most significant change is that the owner of the game can just borrow one of the titles to a family member, which does not lock the owner from his library entirely. Previously, if one of the games was accessed, it locked the whole account until the family member stopped using the shared game.

---

quote:

---

Steam Families are intended to contain your immediate family. As major life events can change who lives in your household, it is understandable that some day you may need to join a new Steam Family. Adults can leave a family at any time, however, they will need to wait 1 year from when they joined the previous family to create or join a new family.

---

quote:

---

If a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Other family members are not impacted.

---