Steam’s old Family Sharing feature, which allowed members of the same household to play each other’s Steam games, has been replaced with the new Steam Families system, which graduated from beta this week. The revamped system does the same thing as the old one, but adds new features and comes with some new stipulations, including a region restriction.
Up to six people can be part of a Steam Family, and every game in each member’s library is shared with the group (except for games the owner marked as “private” in the properties menu, but if that were a feature I was going to rely on, I’d probably test it to be sure). Only one person can play any given copy of a game at a time, and everyone’s cloud saves, achievements, and Steam Workshop installs are independent of each other. A new parental control system allows adults in the group to decide what children can play, and there’s also a new way for adults to purchase games for kids in their Steam Family, which looks convenient.
There are also quite a few rules and conditions to consider. The biggest stipulation is that you can’t hop around between Steam Families as often as you want. You’ll only be able to start or join a new Family if at least a year has passed since you started or joined your previous Family. There’s also a one-year “cooldown” on each of the six available slots in a Steam Family, so if someone vacates a slot you can’t immediately put someone else in their place.
It’s not mentioned explicitly in the FAQ, but one thing we’ve noticed is that the region restrictions present in the Families beta, which weren’t in the old system, are still present. One PC Gamer writer’s attempt to share games across national borders (between the UK and Spain) didn’t work.
“While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members,” Valve says. “To that end, as we monitor the usage of this feature, we may adjust the requirements for participating in a Steam Family or the number of members over time to keep usage in line with this intent.”
Despite Valve’s stated intention here, you can set up a Steam Family with family members or friends who live in different physical households (except across borders, as we discovered), and the vague warning that things may change if we don’t stick to “close family members” in “a household” probably isn’t going to stop anyone from creating Families with their Discord pals. It’s like telling a class of third-graders that there might be unspecified consequences in a month if they don’t settle down today—not gonna work. The noncommittal language might mean it’s more lip service than a real intention to add more technical restrictions to curb unintended use, but we’ll see.
Some other considerations:
- If someone in your family gets banned while playing one of the games you own, you get banned, too. Better make sure little bro knows his manners.
- You can play shared games while in offline mode.
- Developers can opt-out of making their games and DLC sharable.
- Some games are excluded because they require third-party accounts.
Finally, depending on the level of dysfunction in your family, this may or may not be an important detail: “Adult family members can kick any family member out of the Steam Family.”
I have no doubt that “one more word and you’re out of the Steam Family” will be used as an argument-ender in the very near future, if it hasn’t already. The one-year cooldown period on slots could scorch relationships for decades.
The Steam Families support page contains instructions on how to up a Steam Family, and an FAQ with a few more details.
