Valve introduces improved parental controls with Steam Families
Adults will be able to share games and limit child spending with new and existing features
Valve has launched its new Steam Families feature.
Steam Families provides new and existing parental controls, and allows adults to implement child spending limits by approving and denying payment requests for games.
It will replace Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View by putting both features in one place. Existing settings will be transferred over, as will developer settings from previously eligible games.
One user can create a Steam Family of up to five members, which can be managed from the Steam Client, a mobile device, or web browser.
Family Sharing provides a shared library of games, where users will have their own save files, be able to collect individual achievements, and play the same game at the same time.
As for parental controls, adults can monitor the activity of their child and set limits such as:
- Allow access to appropriate games
- Restrict access to the Steam Store, community, or friends chat
- Set hourly/daily playtime limits
- View playtime requests
- Approve or deny requests from child accounts for additional playtime or feature access (temporary or permanent)
- Recover a child's account if they lose their password