Steam :: Steam News :: Introducing Steam Families
steamcommunity.com
Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families, available today in the Steam Beta Client. 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.

Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.

Features:

  • up to 5 members
  • game sharing
  • parental controls
    • allow access to appropriate games
    • restrict access to the Steam Store, Community or Friends Chat
    • set playtime limits (hourly/daily)
    • view playtime reports
    • approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
    • recover a child’s account if they lost their password
  • child purchase requests
  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    219·
    9 months ago

    A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly.

    The vast majority of games you pay for on Steam can be taken from you in a couple of clicks from a Valve employee. The second there’s a chance in management everything can go out the window very quickly because their position is ripe for abuse.

    • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
      67·
      9 months ago

      1: Steam is NOT a monopoly, competition exists for it, its just that most of it is garbage, and the few that arent, GoG and Itch, Steam outcompetes

      2: This is a problem of Steams competition being bad, not with Steam itself

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        53·
        9 months ago

        A company can be considered a monopoly without having 100% of the market. Microsoft is considered a monopoly, so is Google.

        As for the rest, I don’t know how their competitors being bad changes the fact that you don’t really own the games you purchase on Steam.

        • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
          23·
          9 months ago

          I’m sorry bud, but Monopoly doesnt mean “Really large company” Steam has competition, it doesnt do anything to hamper competition, and its easy enough for new competition to arise. It is not a monopoly in any sense of the word. It is the top player as a digital videogame marketplace because it is leaps and bounds better than all of its competition. You dont like the risks of digital ownership? Understandable, GoG exists to fill that niche.

          • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            32·
            9 months ago

            If you have the power to sway the market in the direction that you want, you’re the only one with that power and you’re the default option for your product then yeah, you very much are a monopoly and that’s the position Steam has in its market.

            It’s currently in court for adopting anti competitive policies regarding pricing.

            Valve is a multi billion dollars company, it doesn’t need you to defend it bud.

            • Kedly@lemm.eeEnglish
              23·
              9 months ago

              It definitely doesnt need me to. I’m just calling bulshit on arguements that are bulshit. And it being in court for that doesnt mean its going to lose, I’d be surprised if someone wasnt attempting to sue them if it meant they could get more money, welcome to capitalism. And Steam has the position it has and is the “default” game store entirely because it is an amazing storefront and its competition sucks. You have to go out of your way to install Steam, the same amount of steps as any other digital storefront. Anyways idealists like you who dont even have a toe in the real world exhaust me, so I’m going to block you now

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
      79·
      9 months ago

      This isn’t Steam specific; this applies to almost every digital marketplace. Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept. When’s the last time you bought a physical copy of a PC game?

      • blue@ttrpg.networkEnglish
        10·
        9 months ago

        Yeah, it sucks, but there’s some things you just have to accept.

        This reminds me of a certain CEO who said gamers need to “get comfortable not owning games” so that subscription models can grow. I can imagine so, so many gamers in a couple years saying this sentence about that and so many more new exploitative practices.

        The truth is, we don’t need to accept it. They need us to accept it so they can get away with it.

        Pushback is crucial.