Valve's new Steam Families feature is now available to everyone after a beta rollout earlier this year. Steam Families lets parents share games with their family, manage parental controls for their kids, and approve requests from their kids to purchase Steam games.
The big improvement of Steam Families over Valve's previous Family Sharing setup is that multiple people can play games from a shared library at the same time. So if I play Balatroand my partner, who is part of my Steam family, wants to play arranger, we can both play these games at the same time. However, if my partner wants to play Balatro while I'm already playing it, she'll have to buy an additional copy. Steam Families lets you play shared games offline.
Valve says Steam Families are “intended to include your immediate family” and that they can include “up to 6 close family members.” Each member of a Steam Family has their own saved games and earns their own achievements. Adults can leave a Steam Family at any time, but if they do, they must wait a year before they can create or join a new family. Children can only be removed from a Steam Family by an adult or with the help of Steam Support.
In a video, Valve explains that the old Family Sharing feature will be retired “at some point.” If you've been using that feature, you may want to consider setting up Steam Families instead.
You can use Steam Families by updating Steam. The latest Steam client update also includes a handful of other updates, including a redesigned screenshot manager.