Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families is now available for all users. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can access and when they can play. Create a Steam Family To get started, you can create a Steam Family and then invite up to 5 family members.
This was previously available as a opt in beta, but is now available for everyone.
It’s fantastic tbh. Less convenient for people who just abuse family share with random people, but for actual families or close groups of long-term friends it’s glorious.
How is it different from the beta one that we already had? I looked today and I’m still in the beta one and there is no other option to the actual one!
This is the same as the beta version, but is distinctly different from what we used to have. Previously playing a shared game locked down the entire library, now it just locks the one copy of the game. Previously you had to sign in on the same device to make it happen, now you can invite into the family remotely. Previously you could switch people in and out easily, now there’s a six person limit on the family and a one year cooldown on both the slot and the member who chooses to leave a family.
Overall it’s better as long as you didn’t abuse the system before.
Previously playing a shared game locked down the entire library, now it just locks the one copy of the game.
This is by far the best thing ever for me. My 10 year old son is always hogging the damn thing and I never get to play. 😂
Thank you valve for locking only the game. I’m so freaking happy, you have no idea.
I still don’t understand the cooldown part, but meh, I got what I’ve always dreamed of, and that is what I care about.
No, not through Steam Families. Steam servers don’t host non-Steam games that you put in your library, it just launches the executable for you when you click play.
It’s fantastic tbh. Less convenient for people who just abuse family share with random people, but for actual families or close groups of long-term friends it’s glorious.
How is it different from the beta one that we already had? I looked today and I’m still in the beta one and there is no other option to the actual one!
This is the same as the beta version, but is distinctly different from what we used to have. Previously playing a shared game locked down the entire library, now it just locks the one copy of the game. Previously you had to sign in on the same device to make it happen, now you can invite into the family remotely. Previously you could switch people in and out easily, now there’s a six person limit on the family and a one year cooldown on both the slot and the member who chooses to leave a family.
Overall it’s better as long as you didn’t abuse the system before.
This is by far the best thing ever for me. My 10 year old son is always hogging the damn thing and I never get to play. 😂 Thank you valve for locking only the game. I’m so freaking happy, you have no idea. I still don’t understand the cooldown part, but meh, I got what I’ve always dreamed of, and that is what I care about.
This might be a dumb question, but can you share non steam games that are in your library?
No, not through Steam Families. Steam servers don’t host non-Steam games that you put in your library, it just launches the executable for you when you click play.
That’s what I figured. Good call on the games not being on the servers, I didn’t think about that. Thanks
I think you can Steam Remote Play Together with non-Steam games, but that’s the only way to “share” them that I know of.
There’s no mechanism by which that could work.
Yes I know. The question was answered hours before you replied.
This implementation of steam families has been available in beta for several months. This is just the non-beta roll-out of the feature to everyone.