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Steam :: Introducing Steam Families (steamcommunity.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

178 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Valve announced a replacement feature for both Family Sharing and Family View. Currently in beta.

Features:

up to 5 members
game sharing
parental controls
- 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 requests

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Who can be in a Steam Family?

While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members.

To that end, as we monitor the usage of this feature, we may adjust the requirements for participating in a Steam Family or the number of members over time to keep usage in line with this intent.

This sounds like they are going to limit usage to geo-locational. Or that's just supposition by me but I don't see any other things this would target.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago

It would be nice if they could someday find a better way to enforce this. What if your kid has shared custody with their other parent, and they aren't in the same household all the time? What if they're studying abroad and aren't even in the same country?

I don't have the solution, but I do hope someone eventually finds a better way to do it.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Probably less geo-location and more just shared IP block/address

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I experimented around with it in the beta out of curiosity.

Failed to accept the family invite. Your account must be in the same country as all current family members.

I'm assuming this is based on account region (i.e. purchase region) and not IP.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Wireguard makes everyone one big happy family!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

If this is based on store region, VPN is not enough. You'll need a payment method from that country as well.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Assuming it is store country that is checked: Simply VPN-ing doesn't change that. Instead you have to make a purchase in the new place with "a payment method from the region you have moved to". From experience this locks your account to the new region for 3 months. What would be interesting to know is if you can be in a family and then change regions afterwards without getting auto-kicked.

Needless to say, my experiments ended at trying to see if they have any kinds of restrictions in place (unlike for the original family share) and I don't wanna buy a throwaway game and lock an account into a different region for 3 months just for shits and giggles.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You should remember that valve already threatened VPN users after everyone was buying games in Argentina.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

They mean you vpn into your home network.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Worth noting that this could also potentially be due to differences in censorship/rating laws across country lines. For instance, Germany has some strict regulations regarding Nazi imagery in media. So games need to have a specific Germany-friendly version if they feature that kind of imagery. And Steam may not be able to serve two different versions of the game with a single license.