It’s become a bit of a meme lately that Steam, and its creator Gabe Newell, “do nothing and win anyway” when it comes to competition with their fellow PC video game distribution services. While funny, this isn’t actually technically true since Steam does do things by adding features to their service. One such example would be the Steam Families feature added to the Steam Beta Client, and if this new feature goes over well we’ll be seeing it on the main Steam client. If you’re interested in reading the entirety of what the Steam Family feature entails feel free to read the entire article on the official Steam event blog here.
The gist of it is basically in the title: it’s a way to manage games played among your household, up to 6 though. It lets you play games other family members have bought for free, provided they have a copy.
While we know that families come in many shapes and sizes, Steam Families is intended for a household of up to 6 close family members…To that end, as we monitor the usage of this feature, we may adjust the requirements for participating in a Steam Family or the number of members over time to keep usage in line with this intent.
It’s pretty cut and dry, and I recommend reading the full article to see what it can and can’t do as it features a pretty in-depth FAQ.
Overall, it’s nice to see features constantly being added to Steam like this. Especially ones that drastically increase the user experience. Such smooth operations are definitely the reason Steam holds the PC userbase in the palm of its hand, and will likely continue to do so in the future. Hopefully they continue to make such improvements and add new features like this in the future.