One of Steam’s best features, aside from the ability to buy games at a reasonable price and then pay for those games, is undoubtedly its family-sharing functionality.
Now, if you’re Cody from a couple of weeks ago and have yet to learn what I’m talking about, Family Sharing is a handy dandy feature that lets you share your entire game library with family and, better yet, friends.
This means that if your version of Cody wants to try out Baldur’s Gate 3 but doesn’t want to buy it himself, you can share your library with them – proving you don’t both want to play simultaneously, that is.
However, that nasty little limitation to an otherwise excellent feature has just been waved goodbye thanks to Valve announcing a massive overhaul to this system that sees Steam Family Sharing and Family View into one new Steam Families package.
So, from what we know so far, Steam Families will function almost exactly as its two predecessors, but it also brings with it many new improvements, the biggest of which is the ability for family members to now play different games from the same library, at the same time.
Previously, if someone was playing a game on your Steam library, you had to be in offline mode, or you would kick the other person playing, but now, that limit is gone.
Your friends/family can all enjoy freeloading while you also enjoy your library, just so long as you aren’t trying to access the same game.
Each family group member will also get access to their own saves, achievements, workshop files and other features.
There’s also a new aspect of Steam Families – game pooling. So, let’s say you have three members in your family. You own Portal 2 and Half-Life. At any time, one person can play Portal 2, and another can play Half-Life, but you could never play the same game together.
However, thanks to game pooling, if someone in the family also owns a copy of Portal 2, then it would mean that the family owns two copies of the game, and two people can access it simultaneously.
Currently, Steam Families is in beta, but if you want to check it out yourself, you can opt into the Steam client beta.
Are you excited for these changes? Let me know in the comments.