Steam Families Update

Steam’s Family Sharing is dead, long live Steam Families! The former method of Steam library sharing has been replaced by a new system that makes using shared libraries a lot easier.

A family group can have up to six members, a small increase from the previous five, and importantly, Steam no longer locks whole libraries when the account owner is playing a game. Now, just individual games will be locked when a family member is playing them, and if there’s more than one copy of a game in a family group multiple members can still play at the same time – regardless of whether they’re the owners.

The update also enabled some deeper parental controls. Group members can have one of two roles: parent or child. Parents can set playtime limits, restrict access to inappropriate games, monitor playtime, and manage access and purchase requests made by a child. These features are accessible via the Steam mobile app, too, so you won’t need to wait until you’re home and at your computer to approve requests.

As it was with Steam Family Sharing, library owners are accountable for cheaters. If a family member is banned while playing your game, you’ll also be banned – so mind who you share your library with.

Playtron OS Revealed with a Rocky Start

A new Linux-based handheld distro called Playtron came out of stealth on March 18, but was quickly hit with a copyright claim.

Playtron looks very promising, headed by three founders with experience at notable tech start-ups, and one, Frank De Girolami, with — somewhat dated — experience in the gaming industry (Atari & Alone in the Dark). But beyond the founder, the upcoming distro has some handheld-pedigree developers coming from projects like the Box86 emulator and ChimeraOS, The Verge reports.

The basic plan, Playtron says, is to “extract the gaming ecosystem from Windows and leave everything else behind,” creating a platform-agnostic that makes it as easy to play games from Epic as Steam. (And maybe Xbox Game Pass?)

The company says it’s launching its distro later this year — which will be compatible with the Steam Deck — and will ship dedicated hardware in 2025. But there are already some concerning notions.

For one, hearing the distro is Linux-based with devs from notable open-source projects leads one to believe it’s a project that, though for profit, will respect open-source licenses. But, Playtron was hit with a copyright claim immediately out of stealth after supplying The Verge with a YouTube video of The Witcher 3 being played on Android and claiming it as their own, making things a little less convincing out the gate. Not to mention that “Playtron hasn’t quite decided just how open source it’ll be,” The Verge says.

Still, the company’s plan isn’t bad if it can create a good OS. The Verge reports it has $10 million in funding and plans to sell the distro for $10 a pop, drastically undercutting the $80 fee “that OEMs tell [McMaster] they spend today.”

In Other News…

Top 100 Games Played on Steam Deck

To celebrate two years of the Steam Deck, Valve created a list of the 100 most played games on the handheld PC in its second year — between March 2024 & 2024.

Looking for something new to play on your deck? This is probably a good list to check out. Valve ordered it by “highest daily active player count” regardless of verified status, so there may even be a few surprises.

Here’s the top 10:

Suyu Removed from GitLab

Emulators can’t get a break — but maybe this one is expected.

Suyu, a fork of the recently dead Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator, has been removed from GitLab following a DMCA takedown request.

It’s not clear whether that takedown actually originated from Nintendo, as The Verge reported some odd inconsistencies with the notices shared on Suyu’s Discord. If you’ve been around the Yuzu subreddit since February, the suggestion that somebody may have sent this on Nintendo’s behalf may not surprise you much.

More Xbox Handheld Rumors

I’m not sure it can even be called a rumor at this point. There was lots more talk of a potential Xbox handheld in March, spurred by news of an Xbox dev kit being registered in South Korea and followed by Windows Central’s Managing Editor, Jez Corden, letting it out on the Xbox Two podcast that new Xbox handheld prototypes do exist!

In the podcast, Corden cautions that a prototype doesn’t necessarily make it to market, but makes a point that the landscape and dominance of the Steam Deck must be pushing Microsoft and Sony to make competing hardware.

That all makes the South Korea Xbox dev kit certification somewhat titillating. But, of course, nothing is confirmed.

What Are We Playing?

The Elder Scrolls Online

In March, I had a hankering for some MMO action. But, I was visiting my parents for a few weeks and wasn’t about to game on my Mac. (What a sin.) So, I booted up a game I haven’t played since it launched 10 years ago: the Elder Scrolls Online.

I’m pleasantly surprised by the state of the game! The limited casting design makes it work very well with Steam Deck — it is designed to work with controllers after all — and it runs very well once you shut down the launcher that stays open in the background. Fortunately, the Steam Deck makes this very seamless. I take issue with the game’s membership system, though, which seems to make you pay to avoid inventory management.