New Steam game sharing feature removes clunky Family Share hurdle: Steam Families allows simultaneous library access

There's something special about sharing a hobby with your friends and family, but sometimes that's easier said than done — especially given the financial burden that a hobby like gaming can come with. Steam's Family Sharing has long provided players with a way to share their games with family members, but there were some serious limitations.

Valve has just announced Steam Families, which consolidates the features from Steam Family Sharing and Family View into one game-sharing hub that's also a lot more flexible than the previous system. In short, Steam Families allows households and close family members to share game libraries amongst each other without having to buy new game keys for each player.

For starters, and by far the biggest change, is that family members can now share games from the same library at the same time. Previously, Steam Family Sharing would only let one user at a time access the shared game library. Now, the restriction only applies to singular games, i.e., two players cannot play the same game from the same shared library at the same time.

Of course, if there are multiple copies of the same game, two players can each play a different copy of the game.

Where Steam Families also differs from Family Sharing is that all games in your game library are automatically shared with other family members when you join the family — that means adult family members will need to manually restrict children's access to steamy or violent games where necessary.

Valve has also imposed restrictions on joining and leaving Families. While an adult may voluntarily leave a Steam Family at any point, minors will need to be removed from the Family by an adult member. Additionally, players can move from one Steam Family to another, but there is a one-year waiting period between joining Families, and each Family slot has a similar waiting time imposed on it, meaning you will need to wait at least a year after a Family member leaves before a new person can join that same slot.

Curiously enough, Steam Family members can even share games when the Steam client is launched in offline mode, meaning players can conceivably play the same game simultaneously on different devices, as long as one is playing offline.

For now, to access Steam Families, you will need to opt into the Steam Families Beta from the Steam Interface Settings page.

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