Valve has unveiled enhanced parental controls through the introduction of Steam Families
Valve has rolled out an innovative platform called Steam Families.
This new system, Steam Families, includes advanced parental controls and offers parents the ability to manage and regulate their children's gaming expenses by either accepting or rejecting purchase requests.
It combines the features of Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View into a single unified interface. All pre-existing settings and developer configurations for eligible games will automatically transition to this new setup.
The feature allows one account to establish a family group with up to five members, which can be administered via the Steam Client, a smartphone, or an internet browser.
Through Family Sharing, a collective library of games is accessible to users, who can maintain personal save files, earn unique achievements, and play simultaneous sessions of the same game.
In terms of parental control functionalities, guardians can oversee their child's gaming activities and enforce restrictions, including:
- Enabling access only to age-suitable games
- Blocking entry to parts of the Steam platform like the Store, community sections, or friend chats
- Setting limits on game time by the hour or day
- Reviewing and managing playtime extension requests
- Granting or refusing additional playtime or feature access for child accounts, either temporarily or permanently
- Recovering a child's account if the password is lost
