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Steam :: Introducing Steam Families (steamcommunity.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

178 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] [email protected] 158 points 7 months ago (84 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

What is a PMFN?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

"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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Oh, I hadn't read of it in that form, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

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