Steam announces family groups, a new way to share games with family members or friends, but with some obvious restrictions.
Sharing games on Steam will soon be easier. The family loan function already existed, with which to share video games between several users, and now Valve has given it a twist, creating the Familiar groupsavailable today in beta of the Steam client.
With a family group, you can add up to five members (plus the host), that is, up to six people will be able to benefit from the same game library and the same purchases.
That, in principle, since Valve leaves it up to developers to decide whether to allow their games to participate in this family loan feature, knowing that this could potentially have consequences on their sales. In the Steam store you can see the games compatible with family loan.
How to share Steam games with new family groups
The next time you log in to Steam, the new “Family Library” will appear in the left column as a subsection of your games list. Your titles will remain yours, and when you purchase a new game, it will appear in your collection as always.
But each player in the family group will have their own saved games, their own Steam achievements, access to your Workshop files, and much more. And you can play these games without needing an Internet connection.
What naturally cannot be done is playing two members of the group the same game at the same time. It's not worth buying a copy of Helldivers 2 and wanting to play all of them at the same time…
“Let's imagine that you belong to a family group of four members, and that you have a copy of Portal 2 and another of Half-Life. One member can play Portal 2 and another Half-Life at any time. However, if two members want to play Portal 2 at the same time, someone else in the family group will have to purchase a copy of that game.
Once that purchase is made, The family group will have two copies of Portal 2, so two members of the family will be able to play at the same time. If, on the other hand, you do not purchase another copy, you will be able to play any other game in your library until the other member stops using the only copy of Portal 2.”
Steam gives more details about how this new mode works, including parental control measures when purchasing games or blocking users' access to games with age restrictions.