Valve reveal’s new Steam feature that will allow players to more easily manage and share their libraries.
Valve, one of the PC gaming giants, has announced a new sharing feature for Steam which will inevitably make sharing and managing games easier, it is also currently in testing on Steam beta clients and going by the name ‘Steam Families’.
Although physical media in games is far from extinct, the market on gaming is increasingly being dominated by digital sales and distribution. The only downside is that digital platforms tend to range from how convenient the companies make it for players to share their games with other users they come to trust, this tends to also spark frustration if the function isn’t making it easy.
This issue would be centered particularly around parents, who tend to balance having multiple accounts for their children and themselves while also managing game sharing and trying to keep any inappropriate titles away; some of which are sold and easy to find on the same marketplaces as family-friendly ones.
Taking this issue into account, Valve has stepped up by making the Steam Families, a new feature that is available for users who have opted into the Steam Beta Client. Once the feature laves and gets implemented across Steam systems, Steam Families will consolidate and replace the current Steam Family Sharing and the Steam Family View features.
Actively on the standard side of things on non-beta Steam clients, steam Family sharing lets a Steam player on a shared computer view, grant access, and request to install games in the library of other users.
Users on the current beta Steam client will be allowed to create their own Steam Family and add up to five members via Steam, mobile device, or browser. Members of the same Steam family will be able to play shareable games with and from their fellow members via a “Family Library”. Valve’s new feature, will allow players can even play while those other members are online, though that being said, the only restriction is that this will only be allowed if both players aren’t playing the same game.
So, if you are playing a game such as The Thaumaturge and a friend or loved one wants to play one of your games, for example, Palworld, with Valve’s new feature there will be no need to set yourself offline as you both can play from the same library while online which may come as a relief to some players who would rather not disturb their family or friends just to play a game while the other is online.
