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.
Up to 6, sharing your shareable games library
Adult and child accounts, limit child accounts, approve and pay for child buy requests,
Intended for close household family; can’t join a different one until one year after joining
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.
Can you fix this? There was enough misinformation floating around about this already when this feature went into beta.
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.
it should say something like: “After joining, can’t join another for a year”
I’ve been taking part in the beta, as far as Steam is concerned me and my friends are a thrupple. Works pretty well, other family member’s games just show up in your library. Haven’t had any issues, Steam will tell you if your copy is in use by a family member and you either play something else or ask them to quit.
A pretty good change for how I use Family Sharing. The only detriments seem to be the issue of the game owner being banned for violations of other family members and the 1 year cooldown between leaving and joining a family. Both should be manageable issues, though, if you’re at the point of trusting someone enough to log into their machine with your credentials.
Both seem reasonable. The banning is (AFAIK) mostly to prevent cheaters from making made-up familymember steam -accounts, and cheating in games as them. Once one made-up family member is banned, make another.
You’re right. And sure, it’s gonna suck for the twelve legitimate people who lose their access because their sibling is a dickwad, but that’s an okay tradeoff if it prevents a sudden surge of cheats.
Not sure if I am reading this wrong, but I think it is just the one that did the cheating and game owner that get banned
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.
I could be mistaken but I think I read something about being able to choose which games a child member can see and play? If your adult sis is prone to getting banned, just invite her as child, if the system works like that. Sure, the terms “adult” and “child” are more intuitive for regular people, but in essence it’s just “admin/mod” and “member”, no?
It’s one year cooldown after joining a family share. I.e. if you leave half a year after joining, you have to wait another half a year to join another family share.
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.
Mhmm, I just noticed it yesterday when I first tried using it. But it doesn’t seem all good, because apparently it only works (without any workarounds) if you are on the same network. My sister, who lives in the same country but 400 km away, couldn’t join upon invitation :c
I’m curious if this will improve DLC mismatches. For example, I’ve purchased most of the map DLCs for Euro & American Truck Simulator, but my wife only purchased the base game.
By memory she previously could access all of the DLC via library sharing until she purchased it, then she could only access the base game and not the shared DLC. It’s probably cleanest to keep it that way since you never know how different games handle DLC being activated and de-activated within an existing save, but it would be nice to not punish someone for playing a game with DLC via library sharing then purchasing the game for themselves and buying DLC later
From experience with the beta and memory, your wife (and you) will be able to choose which version to play. Either yours with a ton of DLC or hers with none. You should both be able to use the version with all DLC, but not at the same time.
It’s been a while since we tested this though so things might have changed, including my memory…
Ooh I hope that’s the case because that would be much more convenient
Edit for anyone who stumbles on this: it works exactly like the above commenter described! It looks like there’s some opportunity to better communicate what DLC the “copy” you select is installing since it doesn’t show a full list of DLC but it at least shows who’s library it’s pulling from so you should be able to infer the full DLC list based on who has all of the DLC
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Can you fix this? There was enough misinformation floating around about this already when this feature went into beta.
it should say something like: “After joining, can’t join another for a year”
deleted by creator
I changed it.
I’ve been taking part in the beta, as far as Steam is concerned me and my friends are a thrupple. Works pretty well, other family member’s games just show up in your library. Haven’t had any issues, Steam will tell you if your copy is in use by a family member and you either play something else or ask them to quit.
Can I be kicked out of a Steam Family?
Yes, adult family members can kick any family member out of the Steam Family.
Just like real my real family
The difference is that you get to choose you steam family :')
You can choose your IRL family too, just takes a little more work to drop the shitty people.
Steam said my partner was ineligible, so no, steam gets final choice. 😢
It’s like the meme, is there someone you forgot to ask?
Hahaha that’s the abusive parent telling you you can’t see your partner anymore
A pretty good change for how I use Family Sharing. The only detriments seem to be the issue of the game owner being banned for violations of other family members and the 1 year cooldown between leaving and joining a family. Both should be manageable issues, though, if you’re at the point of trusting someone enough to log into their machine with your credentials.
Honestly, I think it’s the best solution to also ban the owner.
Both seem reasonable. The banning is (AFAIK) mostly to prevent cheaters from making made-up familymember steam -accounts, and cheating in games as them. Once one made-up family member is banned, make another.
You’re right. And sure, it’s gonna suck for the twelve legitimate people who lose their access because their sibling is a dickwad, but that’s an okay tradeoff if it prevents a sudden surge of cheats.
Not sure if I am reading this wrong, but I think it is just the one that did the cheating and game owner that get banned
Emphasis mine
The best option would be a checkbox to exclude the sharing of VAC games
I could be mistaken but I think I read something about being able to choose which games a child member can see and play? If your adult sis is prone to getting banned, just invite her as child, if the system works like that. Sure, the terms “adult” and “child” are more intuitive for regular people, but in essence it’s just “admin/mod” and “member”, no?
It’s one year cooldown after joining a family share. I.e. if you leave half a year after joining, you have to wait another half a year to join another family share.
https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/13005467
This new system does not involve logging in to another machine with credentials. You send an invite, they accept.
Mhmm, I just noticed it yesterday when I first tried using it. But it doesn’t seem all good, because apparently it only works (without any workarounds) if you are on the same network. My sister, who lives in the same country but 400 km away, couldn’t join upon invitation :c
I’m curious if this will improve DLC mismatches. For example, I’ve purchased most of the map DLCs for Euro & American Truck Simulator, but my wife only purchased the base game.
By memory she previously could access all of the DLC via library sharing until she purchased it, then she could only access the base game and not the shared DLC. It’s probably cleanest to keep it that way since you never know how different games handle DLC being activated and de-activated within an existing save, but it would be nice to not punish someone for playing a game with DLC via library sharing then purchasing the game for themselves and buying DLC later
From experience with the beta and memory, your wife (and you) will be able to choose which version to play. Either yours with a ton of DLC or hers with none. You should both be able to use the version with all DLC, but not at the same time.
It’s been a while since we tested this though so things might have changed, including my memory…
Ooh I hope that’s the case because that would be much more convenient
Edit for anyone who stumbles on this: it works exactly like the above commenter described! It looks like there’s some opportunity to better communicate what DLC the “copy” you select is installing since it doesn’t show a full list of DLC but it at least shows who’s library it’s pulling from so you should be able to infer the full DLC list based on who has all of the DLC