Steam Families might be the definitive family gaming experience for the gaming community.
The official Steam account has posted a tweet from their social media that they are excited to launch Steam Families which is a great overhaul of parental controls and other accessibility features.
It’s surprising that no other gaming service has such a feature that has strict parental guidance/ controls on their apps as the level of accessibility for smartphones and computers has increased drastically in the past decade. These are the quality-of-life features that should be mandated across all platforms to monitor activities for children.
| Feature | Description |
| Family Size | Up to 6 members |
| Functionality | Combines game sharing and parental controls |
| Game Sharing | Access games in other family members’ libraries |
| Individual Accounts | Each member keeps their own account, achievements, and progress |
| Parental Controls | Manage game access, playtime, and store restrictions for children |
| Cross-Device Play | Play shared games on authorized devices |
| Benefits | Convenient game sharing, individual accounts, parental controls |
| Limitations | Sharing limited to family library, cannot share with friends outside the family |
Steam Families- Parental Guidance and Controls
Many games on the market nowadays are mature and have themes that are not suitable for children. This reminds me of the time that Mortal Kombat made waves in the industry when the game was released with its uncensored content and gave rise to the ESRB system back in the early 90s. As a gamer who grew up in the 2000s, there is a clear upward trend in the number of gamers and how gaming became an activity but also an addiction sometimes. Nowadays, we can get stats of everything and feel “proud” to have spent so much time gaming.
When it comes to the Steam Families, the parental controls can firstly invite up to 5 different family members with various degrees of access that can be assessed. Some of the family members can be registered as child accounts and these accounts are supervised by the head/parent of the Steam Account.
Features such as sharable games are immediately available for children to access and they can even restrict access to certain time limit. Stats such as playtime reports and requests for access to additional playtime is also available. In other words, there are enough features to monitor the family’s activity when it come to gaming via the Steam Families account.
Plague of Microtransactions
The concept of in-game purchases or microtransactions is not new for gamers but it is also very tempting for users to pay via one click. There are many real-world scenarios where a lot of young gamers used the saved payment details for microtransactions and the end result was not something to be appreciated.
In this scenario, all the transactions made by the child account need to be approved by the adult account for the transaction to be successful. This is a very smart way to check purchase history, especially by kids who are not familiar with the concept of in-app/ game purchases
The end verdict about Steam Families is that, even though this application is in the Beta phase, it is a great initiative by Steam to have control over family activities and monitor stats. It seems like a safe space for young gamers as there is always an adult supervising all the activities. This might question the act of privacy but I personally think that this is a great initiative.
Steam is one of the best places for purchasing video games and gaming content. To read about the Fake Helldivers 2 Steam sale, click here.
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