11mo ago

Steam :: Introducing Steam Families

steamcommunity.com Steam :: Steam News :: Introducing Steam Families

Hello! We are excited to announce Steam Families, available today in the Steam Beta Client. Steam Families is a collection of new and existing family-related features. It replaces both Steam Family Sharing and Steam Family View, giving you a single location to manage which games your family can acce...

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

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176 comments

Its shit like this why I want to smack the "B-BUT STEAMS MONOPOLY" types who claim Steam does nothing with its 30%. Steam is one of the only companies out their in our late stage capitalist society that actually does things for its customer base without being forced to. We have digital refunds, completely remappable controllers, a linux operating system and portable computer that functions as a console when you dont want to use it as a computer, the only DRM in the world that doesnt actively suck, built in mod database/support, VR, official early access marketplace support (I know it has its issues), user game reviews with multiple sorting options, and thats everything I can currently think of. Steam is not only the only company I dont actively hate (Ok, I kind of like Costco too), vut I actually quite like Steam as a company.
- Digital refunds isn't them being good, it's them getting sued by Australia.
  
  They could have made it an AU only feature, though, and didn't, to their credit.
  
  Because I'm pretty sure EU was next in line to slap them in the face for not offering refunds.
  
  and every other company would wait for every country to threaten them before enabling it there, because that's 5 more months of extra profit!
  
  I think it’s also just generally a good thing for them. I’m way more hesitant to buy stuff from humble and fanatical because I can’t return stuff, so I rather pay a bit more to get it through steam.
  
  I too hate everything that's not completely perfect in every way
  
  Ah yes, my comment openly states I hate steam because it isn't perfect. It's definitely written in there.
  
  And they repeatedly ignored my requests for games which didn't work, as it was three weeks or thereabouts.
  
  Ehh... Idk if that's really on them. You can get around the playtime restriction by just playing offline, so there has to be an alternative restriction that doesn't have that same vulnerability.
  Three weeks is more than enough time to figure out something you own doesn't even work.
  
  I didn't have the time to play it, tried to play it once and it didn't work. I have a life and it often gets in the way, especially if I buy something on sale with the intention to play it later.
  I'm honestly surprised you are defending it; if my car, bought new, stopped working through my continued usage in its first year, it would be repaired for free. A game which I booted up once after three weeks wouldn't work... And I get told "no". Not really acceptable. 30% fee for zero accountability and my money lost.
  
  A car isn't at max $70 lmfao, you're comparing completely different worlds of cost. Also depending on where you buy said car, that isn't the case lol, you buy a lemon... Get fucked it's capitalism baby.
  
  Or my phone, or my TV, or my (insert device here).
  Faulty goods are faulty goods.
  Err no. Grow up.
  
  The problem is that without that rule, you can just buy a game, go offline and play the entire game, then return it. You could essentially play any game you wanted to for free
  
  That already happens; I've got a few thousand games on Steam so I'm not taking the piss when I want to refund a faulty game. My total is probably five or ten refunds in the life of my account (almost 20 years).
- without being forced to. We have digital refunds
  Small nitpick, but it’s funny that you specifically listed their refunds first. Because they were forced into that. Some may remember how comically awful Steam’s customer support used to be. It was genuinely horrible, with resolution turnaround times measured in days and weeks instead of minutes or hours. There was no instant messaging or automated system; You had to email a sketchy email address, then wait days or weeks for them to finally respond. And chances were good that the response would basically boil down to “lul git fuckd loser, sux 2 b u”
  Europe started pushing for them to be more customer friendly, because their refunds in particular were breaching some local European laws. In order to keep operating in Europe, they revamped their refund process entirely and recommitted to better customer service going forwards. But they only started the entire refund revamp in 2015 because they were going to be pushed out of European markets if they failed to comply.
  
  I brought it up because until Steam did it NO digital game marketplace had refunds. Whether or not they got sued, Steam led the way
  
  And its also frecking 10 years ago now they added refunds. It's like people like using "thet got sued to add it" as some sorta "gotcha" that steam is bad, I don't get some people
  
  I'm starting to think these people think we use steam because we have to, and not because its a legitimately amazing games catalogue/storefront. It makes the "Steam is a monopoly" and "What happens when GabeN dies and Steam goes down the drain" comments make sense
  
  You have to have never seriously engaged with the details of the Valve monopoly if you think that's what we are upset about.
  We know Steam is an amazing storefront—I buy my games there because it's the best experience for the cost. But Steam charges a premium. And despite taking smaller cuts, competing platforms like Epic cannot actual pass those cost savings to consumers because Valve is strongarming game publishers into fixing prices.
  
  The fact that you think Epic is consumer friendly in any way tells me all I need to know about engaging you any further on this topic.
  
  I said no such thing. Please come back to this later with a fresh mind, and remember how wrongly you interpreted what was actually said for the sake of trying to fire off a quick response.
  But if you'd rather disengage altogether then it is what it is. Cheers.
  
  @Kedly What? This is flat out untrue. Back in 2008 Stardock's attempt at a storefront via Impulse offered refunds: https://web.archive.org/web/20080708091849/http://tgnforums.stardock.com/315290
  Later in 2013, EA of all companies would also offer refunds on their storefront, Origin: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/08/ea-begins-offering-refunds-for-its-digital-game-sales-on-origin/
  And later that same year, GOG would offer refunds: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/gog-s-new-money-back-guarantee-is-more-about-trust-than-refunds
  It was only a couple years after EA & GOG, in 2015, that Valve began offering refunds on Steam: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/06/valve-begins-offering-refunds-for-all-steam-games/
  
  Impulse offered refunds for technical issues, and I could easily find examples of Steam doing the same in 2008 for GTAIV, EA only sold its own games, which made the legal hurdles it needed to jump through and the amount of developers it needed to get an ok from significantly lower, and GoG is GoG, an actually decent competitor to Steam, so sure I'll give you that GoG beat Steam to the punch there
  
  Your initial claim remains false.
  As indicated, digital game storefronts offered refunds explicitly prior to Steam, and it wasn't leading the way, especially given its policy was that all purchases were not refundable, up till 2015's changes.
  Leading the way isn't making some exceptions to their policies occasionally, it's making refunds a part of the policies from the outset when others aren't.
  
  Fine. My initial statement was incorrect. I still think Valve put a lot of leg work into getting fairly easy refunds in place for a digital storefront that thousands of different developers sell their games on, and that that is an insanely bigger beast than the other examples outside of GoG's example, which I havent fully looked into, but my initial statement was more specific than that and thus wrong
- Don't forget private games, it's a win-win because customers can buy games they don't want to show to their friends and Valve get more money because they get more people buying those ~~embarrassing~~ ~~awesome~~ games.
  
  RIGHT! I FORGOT ABOUT THAT ONE
- Don’t forget Steam Link! It’s one of my favourite features. You’re not even really tethered to any particular device to play your games since so many devices support the app. I play games that are single-player “console” style games in my lounge room for comfort and Steam Link means I can use my very good PC instead of buying into yet another console generation.
- This stuff is great.
  But ignoring all the real issues with Steam is stupid. Its people like you that require others to point out all the issues with Valve and how it won't last forever.
  
  And it's bizarre that some of them seem to get angry when someone else points the issues out.
  
  Looks weird from my side too, when someone starts frothing at the mouth about monopolies when steam is so much as mentioned.
  
  Its the braindead takes that are getting the Ire, Steam ISNT a monopoly, and the 30% cut is industry standard
  
  No ones ignoring the real issues. Steam isnt a monopoly and the 30% cut is industry standard. I'm not going to fault those who take issue with "Valve Time" or Valves shit communication. And frankly, the good stuff doesnt need to last forever, as soon as Steam enshitifies, GoG or Itch'll be there to dethrone it, and Piracy'll be there to get our games back if worst case scenario happens. You want better competition? Shit on Epic and EA to actually provide it
  
  This is demonstrably wrong. The 30% cut is standard because Steam has used the same strategy as Amazon to fix prices across the market (a "Platform Most Favored Nation" clause—see the Wolfire Games v. Valve class action, specifically items 204 and 205 on pg 55). Competing storefronts cannot undercut Steam, so why would they take less than a 30% cut?
  Epic Games Store—which is trying to undercut steam at a 12% fee—still list games at the same price as on Steam because of Valve has strongarmed publishers into fixing the prices. If Epic is charging 18% less but Valve is stopping publishers from reducing the game cost by that much, how is that not blatantly anti-competitive and anti-consumer?
  enshitifies
  Oh good, you are familiar with Cory Doctorow. He has an article on how Amazon abuses their position using the exact same playbook Valve uses.
  
  I don't care about the things you mentioned, but yes, those are also issues.
  I was talking more about the issues around gambling and making loops specifically to take advantage of gamers with problems.
  As well as the real problem that a single leader leading a company/nation will mean that company/nation always fails. The successors will inevitably mess it up sometime.
  
  You say this like the competition hasnt already failed at the get go. Valve has the market share it has because no one else is offering anything better. Itch and GoG offer some things Valve doesnt, and because of that I wont say ALL of Valves competition is shit, but MOST of the competition STARTED off as your worst fear for what Valve MIGHT become
  
  You are doing exactly what I said.
  Valve is good, but they have shit features and I'm not sure why you're defending them (but maybe you're just a troll/ignoring my points?).
  I don't care about the competition - it's like saying a person is molesting a child but hey, those two over there are molesting multiple children and murdering them! So they're worse!
  Marketshare is also a poor predictor as it's often the first person to market as opposed to what's best.
  Think of it another way - Google has the most marketshare of search. Is it the best and is it doing only good things? If you say yes to both then I can't help you further.
  
  Just like you dont care about the competition, I dont care about CS:Go. I havent really defended anything they've done with CS:go. Right from the start I've focussed on two arguements, Steam's (not a) monopoly, and its 30% cut
  
  You can't just ignore the arguments that don't fit your world view/argument. In that scenario I could just look at the negatives of Steam and the positives of Epic and say that the Epic Store is better than Steam because I ignore all the stuff that doesn't fit my argument.
  It's not just Cs go but multiple games like Dota Etc. They have specifically built a whole market and ecosystem to convince you to buy stuff and gamble effectively.
  
  At no point did I say that steam is a perfect clean organization. I was calling out two very specific and common complaints against Steam, that is that its a monopoly and that it doesnt deserve its 30% cut. Your grievance against them is valid and I dont really have much to argue against it. Your fight is not mine personally, but I have no qualms against it
- The company is called Valve.
  
  Fair point. I interact with their storefront more than I've played their games, so my brain jumps to the word Steam before it does Valve.
- A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly.
  The vast majority of games you pay for on Steam can be taken from you in a couple of clicks from a Valve employee. The second there's a chance in management everything can go out the window very quickly because their position is ripe for abuse.
  
  It's not steam's fault that the competition is garbage 🧐
  
  1: Steam is NOT a monopoly, competition exists for it, its just that most of it is garbage, and the few that arent, GoG and Itch, Steam outcompetes
  2: This is a problem of Steams competition being bad, not with Steam itself
  
  A company can be considered a monopoly without having 100% of the market. Microsoft is considered a monopoly, so is Google.
  As for the rest, I don't know how their competitors being bad changes the fact that you don't really own the games you purchase on Steam.
  
  I'm sorry bud, but Monopoly doesnt mean "Really large company" Steam has competition, it doesnt do anything to hamper competition, and its easy enough for new competition to arise. It is not a monopoly in any sense of the word. It is the top player as a digital videogame marketplace because it is leaps and bounds better than all of its competition. You dont like the risks of digital ownership? Understandable, GoG exists to fill that niche.
  
  If you have the power to sway the market in the direction that you want, you're the only one with that power and you're the default option for your product then yeah, you very much are a monopoly and that's the position Steam has in its market.
  It's currently in court for adopting anti competitive policies regarding pricing.
  Valve is a multi billion dollars company, it doesn't need you to defend it bud.
  
  It definitely doesnt need me to. I'm just calling bulshit on arguements that are bulshit. And it being in court for that doesnt mean its going to lose, I'd be surprised if someone wasnt attempting to sue them if it meant they could get more money, welcome to capitalism. And Steam has the position it has and is the "default" game store entirely because it is an amazing storefront and its competition sucks. You have to go out of your way to install Steam, the same amount of steps as any other digital storefront. Anyways idealists like you who dont even have a toe in the real world exhaust me, so I'm going to block you now
  
  https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined
  Microsoft was found to have a monopoly over operating systems software for IBM-compatible personal computers.
  You: "But other OS exist! So it's not a monopoly! People could just install another browser if they weren't happy!"
  
  This isn't Steam specific; this applies to almost every digital marketplace. Yeah, it sucks, but there's some things you just have to accept. When's the last time you bought a physical copy of a PC game?
  
  You don't need to buy physical copies. Games from GoG and, for example, itch.io can be downloaded DRM free.
  
  Yeah, it sucks, but there's some things you just have to accept.
  This reminds me of a certain CEO who said gamers need to "get comfortable not owning games" so that subscription models can grow. I can imagine so, so many gamers in a couple years saying this sentence about that and so many more new exploitative practices.
  The truth is, we don't need to accept it. They need us to accept it so they can get away with it.
  Pushback is crucial.
- What happens when the leadership or ownership changes hands?
  
  He's already said that he'd sink the company before he'd sell it. I believe him... it's not like he's not already rolling in money. What else do you offer him?
  Edit: sink in this context being releasing all the drm.
  
  The man's not gonna live forever, ownership changing is a matter of time, not raw money. And I dread that time.
  
  Well trashing steam wont fix that issue, thats an issue with all Steams competition being garbage
  
  The other part of the question remains however, what happens when leadership changes, even supposing no sale of the company?
  
  We go back to piracy. Easy enough
  Edit: Wait. Do you guys think we use Steam because we HAVE to? GoG exists bros, we're using Steam because we prefer it. If Steam goes to shit we'll just stop using it
  
  Do you guys think we use Steam because we HAVE to? GoG exists bros, we’re using Steam because we prefer it.
  Do you think many are aware of options like GOG? Every other time I've seen it mentioned/suggested, it's often accompanied by, "What's GOG?"
  
  Uh yes I do. Itch and GoG are pretty well known, specifically because they are competent competitors to Steam
- Yeah I love how they pioneered marketing gambling and loot boxes to children, so visionary
  
  CSGO cases pulled $1 billion revenue in 2023. The steam store brought in $8.5 billion in that same year. That's a 30% cut of all sales traffic on steam vs. in-game loot crates on a single title.
  Loot boxes pull insane numbers. And yes they exploit children and problem gamblers. Love to see so many Valve fans downvote you :/
  
  I too love how you can make shit up on the internet
  
  It's literally facts lol
  The other reply to my comment has some links, but there's no way you like Valve and don't also know about Counter-Strike loot boxes and the third party market sites.
- Valve can be attributed with saving PC gaming. When people were terrified of buying “digital only” games on this fugly client called Steam—which only had Valve games and a few no name indies—the PC gaming shelves in places like Walmart and EB Games looked like a clearance section. Just a hodgepodge of games in no particular order, worn out looking boxes of new games picked up and put back down, meanwhile the PlayStation and Xbox walls flourished and even GameCube got more love from a merchandising standpoint.
  Now we trust Valve with our digital libraries the way we’d trust a bank with our money. They’ve earned that trust, and I can’t say the same for Sony or Nintendo which are happy to charge you repeatedly for the same game. Microsoft actually does a pretty good job of making your old games still playable in some form, so Kudos to them.
  So will we be surprised when Epic Games Store goes tits up? No. Will we care when we lose all our games? No, they were all free. Should we support Valve as long as they continue to be the champions of PC gaming? You better if you care about where it goes.
  
  100% These idiots shit on Valve like the PC marketplace wouldnt be infinitely worse without them. If you truly care about the PC sphere getting better, shit on Valves lack of competition, dont try to tear down the best example we have. That being said I'm hesitant to say ONLY option as at this point GoG and Itch are passable competition, even if what they provide is TINY compared to what Valve has brought the PC Gaming Sphere
  
  I’ve used GoG. It’s good. Never used Itch.
- who claim Steam does nothing with its 30%
  I don't think that's the argument against it. Just that it's inordinately high. But Valve is a corporation so not unexpected.
  
  The 30% it's always been the standard though, so not just Valve. That figure comes from retail, where 30-50% is still standard practice. You could argue that retail has higher costs, therefore needs the higher cut, but when Valve created Steam, they probably went with what worked.
  What I really hate about Steam and all online shops, is that you can't resell something you purchased second hand. If I can resell my physical copy of a game or movie, I should be able to do the same with the digital version. Also the fact that they can remove access to the product you bought whenever they want. In my opinion, we need a law that specifies that what you buy is yours, and you get to do whatever you want with it, even if the manufacturer doesn't like it.
  
  Valve is in a really dominant position and has almost always been, so they got a lot of sway on what the industry standard is. So can't really blame other corporations here for the 30%.
  they probably went with what worked.
  That's one way to say it. I think early on they had the cost advantage to retail and needed to convince people to buy digitally instead of traditionally, so lower cut. But of course they, as any company, would keep it near to as high as possible while being competitive. I'm not trying to shit on Valve by saying that, it's just how it works for any company.
  What I really hate about Steam and all online shops, is that you can’t resell something you purchased second hand.
  I think that was actually one usecase for NFTs or whatever. There was much talk about it a while back but after the whole jpeg fiasco and shitcoin stuff I think it was all killed off.
  
  You realize there have been payment processors and retail stores long before valve existed right? And markups/cuts have always been commonplace.
  
  Friend, I don't know if you noticed but we're talking specifically about game distribution platforms here. I really don't know what you thought your comment would add to the discussion. What next, you're going to tell me that money existed before Steam too lol.
- Also catalog filtering. I wish GoG had a search filter half as good as Steam's!
- Out there*
- Sigh... I'm getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They also abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn't absolve them of the second.
  Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don't know what we're missing.
  To learn more about Steam's anticompetitive practices:
  See the complaint from the pending class action case Wolfire Games v. Valve (at a minimum items 204, 205 on pg. 55) for how Steam's PMFN clause affect publisher pricing.
  See Cory Doctorow's Amazon's financial shell game let it create an "impossible" monopoly as a starting point for how a PMFN affects the market unfairly and harms the consumer.
  
  What is a PMFN?
  
  "Platform Most Favored Nation". It's a type of clause in platform/marketplace agreements that prohibit a seller from listing their product for a lower price on a different sales platform. Specifically, it prevents selling on a different marketplace with lower fees (e.g. Epic Games or a publishers own website) and passing the difference as savings to the consumer.
  
  Oh, I hadn't read of it in that form, thanks!
  
  Doesn't Amazon have the same stipulation on every item listed on their site?
  Edit: I think I misunderstood you here. I thought Amazon's game division was complaining about Steam. That would have been very hypocritical.
  
  Epic gives me free games and I still don't like them... The "problem" is Valve is Steam-rolling the competition because people want to give them money.
  
  Yep. Because honestly, Steam is better than Epic in almost every way. When you want to buy a particular game X, you get a lot more from your purchase if it's on Steam (workshop, friends, multiplayer, etc.). There is strong inertia and network effects that keep us all preferring Steam.
  Epic can't compete with the Steam experience. But if Epic was able to list everything 18% cheaper (the difference in fees between Epic and Steam)—then they would rightly be able to compete on price.
  
  I understand now and that does make sense. No point in undercutting your competition if you can't pass those savings to the customers.

176 comments