Re: Steam Families

On 3/21/2024 10:39 AM, JAB wrote:

On 20/03/2024 18:06, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

Still, as good as all this may be, it doesn't solve the one issue I
really have with the whole thing, and that is that each person (or
computer) needs to have a separate Steam account. You can't just buy
little Donnie his own PC, log-on to Steam with your account, and let
him use that.
>
(Well, you can, but you yourself won't be able to play your games
until lil' Donnie stops playing). And the idea of having to create
accounts for each kid seems sort of creepy. There is enough
data-harvesting done on kids already.
>
Just let me use the same account on multiple computers, and lock it so
only one instance of each game can be used at the same time. That's
what I really want, Valve. Maybe give parental controls to lock down
access to certain Steam features per computer. It can all be done
without requiring kids to sign away their privacy. Is that really too
much to ask?
>

 I'm not sure it makes much difference once you introduce parental controls as even if you have a single Steam account you still going to need to be able to set up sub-accounts each with their own restrictions and probably e-mail addresses unless you want little Timmy's wishlist items on sale all the time. I'd also add something I think is more important, once children get to a certain age they want their own accounts and the privacy it gives them for what they do on Steam outside of just playing games.

One thing I also noticed was that if you just let the kid play on your account the playtimes on the same account are of course counted to you instead of the player on a second account. I guess people don't mind that much, but I order my games by playtime, and felt really annoyed that LEGO Jurassic World showed up as one of the games I have played the longest.