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
This is so amazing I’m wondering how on earth they got publishers on board with this. I guess technically they don’t need their permission, but I see some hilariously oversized coffee mugs being thrown across board rooms in anger after reading this announcement.
Probably because it’s mostly just a QoL update which also restricts people to one family group - which was always the intention but it closes a loophole where person A could share with person B and B could separately share their library with person C unless all three are in the same family group and geo location. Plus there’s now a year penalty to switch family group or refill a slot that has been vacated so you really have to commit to it. In many ways it’s more restrictive than before, albeit better for the intended use case.
I’m a little bit sad because I shared my library with my brother and niece in other countries in Europe and that’s no longer doable. Ah well