Steam is Changing the Way Library Sharing Works and How to Participate

If you've been library-sharing with your family (or friends — we see you), then we've got news about the state of Steam's library-sharing feature! What was once known as both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View is now amalgamating into one: Steam Families!

Not only is this changing the way that everything is handled overall, but it's a general step up from the previous system, alongside including some much-needed features for families who have included children in their libraries! But before we get into the new systems, let's talk a bit about what's happening, overall, with Family Sharing and how Steam Families will work.

First and foremost, Steam Family's main intent is to share this with your family. While we know that many have shared with their close friends and the like, Valve's notes mention that the entire purpose of library sharing is to do it with your "immediate family", as quoted from the FAQ. To this end, the feature will be tweaked and modified to ensure that it is being used as intended for those who want to have multiple accounts or share it with close friends.

Little ol' me all alone in my family...

For those who are sharing it with an actual household, however, Steam Family is an overall betterment of the system as a whole. While previously, family sharing meant that you could only play games while everyone else was offline because taking advantage of a library would lock out the library as a whole, the new system instead locks out individual games. Two family members can play different games from libraries not directly associated with their own, and depending on how many accounts own a specific game, more members of that family can take advantage of it. So if your household is the owner of two Dragon's Dogma 2 copies and it has four members, the two who don't own it could be playing it while the owners play other things in their library.

This is a massive improvement from locking the library as a whole, and it'll ensure that families can share any of the games they own with ease. However, sharing every game comes with a massive caveat, hidden away in the FAQ section: if anyone is banned while playing a multiplayer title for cheating, the owner of the game and the account that was playing the game will both be banned. This is in place to prevent multi-accounters from abusing the system and creating new accounts to bypass bans, as instead, the copy of the game will be banned.

This change explains the recent change to Steam store pages, where you can find "Family Sharing" among the other important information games have, such as their play modes, achievements, trading cards, and Steam cloud. Any developer that has previously opted into Family Sharing will instantly be part of Steam Family, but they are within their rights to opt out at any given point.

Also new to Steam Family is the capability to have Parental Controls. These will allow gamer parents to control and see the playtime of their children and monitor how they are behaving on Steam overall. There are two types of members in a Steam Family: adult and child. Adults can manage the family and apply account restrictions while children will be subject to any parental controls and have no control over managing the family, including whether they can leave it or not.

Parental Controls include being able to allow access only to appropriate games, restrict access to things like the Steam Store, Community, or even the Friends Chat, set limits to playtime which can be done either by hour or day, view information about a children's playtime, and recover the account if the password gets lost. Children can ask for additional playtime or get access to a specific feature, which can either be a temporary or permanent change in the Steam Family, and only an Adult can manage and approve that request.

Children will be allowed to make a purchase request that is meant to expedite the process of buying games for children. The children can request a purchase for the games, and within the request section, the parent can either approve or decline it, which will complete the purchase via the adult's shopping information and add it to the child's account automatically. This is to ensure that it's a quicker system by not having to send a gift purchase or having to allow the kid to borrow the credit card, making it easier and safer to buy games for children overall. Adults will also be able to choose which games are shared with children accounts, but otherwise, all of your games will be shared with other adult accounts, and no further control is being given at this current time.

It's worth noting that due to the intended use, there are a lot of restrictions regarding joining and leaving any Steam Family. Children can only be removed by an adult member, and adults can leave at their will, but both their spot and their capability to join a new family will be limited to one entire year, meaning you won't be able to take advantage of Steam Family or join different families at opportune moments.

You can start taking advantage of the Steam Family system right away by joining the Steam Beta! By going to the top-right on Steam, clicking settings, and then going to Interface, you can find the "Client Beta Participation", where you can select the "Steam Families Beta" and begin creating your family right away!