Today Valve announced Steam Family, an overhauled family sharing and parental control suite for Steam users.
According to the announcement, the new set of features is already available in beta, and you can opt-in by selecting "Steam Family Beta" in the "Client Beta Participation dropdown menu of the Steam interface options.
It'll replace both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View.
Steam Family lets you invite up to 5 family members (6 in total) who will have access to a new family library on their client. All family members have access to all shareable games owned by any member, and they will have separate save games and achievements. They will also have access to the Steam Workshop.
You can play a game on a family member's library even if they're online playing another game, and if the family has more than one copy of a game, the same number of players can play that game at the same time.
As usual, developers can opt out of the sharing features at any time.
The new parental control features provide parents with the following options:
- 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
You can also approve and pay for a child's purchase from your mobile device or email.
The feature is intended for 6 "close" family members and Valve mentions that it will monitor the feature to prevent abuse.
An important caveat worth mentioning is that a family member playing your game and getting banned will also get you banned from that game.
In other Steam news, recently Valve made it possible to set individual games as private, even as you purchase them. While it wasn't mentioned today, I don't think you can expect to hide them from members of your Steam Family.
