Valve has introduced the new Steam Families feature, which is now available on the Steam Beta Client.

According to the blog post, the new Steam Families aims to replace both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving users a single location to manage and access the games they and their family can play.

A Steam Family can consist of up to 5 family members, users can manage their family from either their Steam Client, mobile device, or web browser.

By joining a Steam Family, each member can gain access to the following features:

Family Sharing

When joining a Steam Family, users will gain access to shareable games that the other family members own, and vice versa. The next time they log in to Steam, the new ‘family library’ will appear in the left column as a subsection of their games list.

Users will maintain ownership of their current titles, and new games that they have purchased will still show up in their collection.

When users are playing a game from the family library, they will create their own saved games, which allows them to individually earn their Steam achievements, have access to workshop files, and more.

Even if another family member is online playing another game, Family Sharing still allows other users to play games from that family member’s library.

Family Sharing is a feature that developers may opt their games out of for technical or other reasons at any time.

Parental Controls

New parental controls are also implemented into Steam Families, allowing parents to set limits on what and when their children play games on Steam, as well as controlling which games the children have access to and monitoring their activity. This information is available from wherever you access Steam.

Members of a Steam Family can have one of two roles: adult or child. Adult family members can manage invites and apply account restrictions, while Children are subject to parental controls and do not have the aforementioned permissions to manage the family.

Parental control features for adults include:

• 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 Request

Now of course, all families have to go through that process of the child asking for the credit card of their parents to buy a certain game they want. So, Valve streamlined this process with the Child Purchase Request.

A new payment option has been introduced in Steam Families, where a child account can request an in-family adult to pay for their shopping cart. The adult can then approve and pay for the purchase from their own mobile device or email.

When approved, all games from the shopping cart will be added to the child’s account.

Steam Family Beta

Since the feature has yet to be completely added, users who are interested in testing the new Steam Families will need to opt into the Steam Family Beta. Any family members that users invite will also need to join the beta.

To join the beta, the steps are as follows:

• While Steam is running, click on Steam’s upper left, then choose the “Settings” menu.
• Select Interface, then under “Client Beta Participation” select the dropdown menu
• Select Steam Family Beta from the drop-down list, and click OK. You’ll be prompted to restart Steam at this point.

Once opted in, users can then go to Account Details on the Store page, then click on the Family Management section to access Steam Families

And that’s all about the new Steam Families feature. Once again, the feature is still in its beta phase, so users may see it go after a while, but the effort to make Steam more accessible to families is commendable.