Valve has announced that the Steam Familiesor the system of family shares relating to the catalog of games on the digital platform, are available starting today with the Steam beta client.
Among the various functions there is also parental control, which was discussed a few months ago: by setting profiles for adults or children, it is possible limit access to certain contents to the latter by age rating, store or chat.
The strong point of the update, however, is the shares, clearly: to activate the system, simply create a family share and then invite up to five family members. At that point all members will have access to their respective shared games.
How to access family shares
As mentioned, access to Steam family shares requires all potential family members to sign up for the beta version of the client. To do this, simply go into the settings, select “interface” and then activate the item “participation in the client beta”, then “Steam Family Beta”.
Family units can be made up of a maximum of six people and it is possible to abandon them, but subject to precise rules: an adult user will not be able to join a new family for one year, and in the same way a slot left empty can be reused only after a year.
As regards how sharing works, the following example was given on the official Steam website:
Let's say you're part of a family of 4 and you own a copy of Portal 2 and a copy of Half-Life. At any time, one member can play Portal 2 and another can play Half-Life.
If two of you want to play Portal 2 at the same time, another family member will need to purchase a copy of the game. After purchase, the family owns two copies of Portal 2 and two members can play at the same time.
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