How To Share Games Using Steam Family Sharing

• Steam Families allows you to share your games with family and friends.
• You can create a family from Settings > Family > Create a new Family.
• Once done, invite your friends and family from your friends list.

Owning and playing games could bring about joy to gamers. Unfortunately, not everyone’s well off, and the increasing game prices in recent years have left budget gamers in despair. Digitalization has killed the good old days and habits of borrowing game discs from our friends, but not all hope is lost. One of the most popular platforms, Steam allows you to share games using the Steam Family Sharing feature, and the feature recently got much better with a major update. Here’s how you can share Steam games with your friends and family.

Set Up Steam Family Sharing

Steam Families on Steam allows your friends and family members to play your games while earning their own Steam achievements and saving the game progress to the cloud. One of the prerequisites to using the Family Sharing feature is that you need to be friends with the account and add them to your Steam Family to start sharing games.

Creating and managing a Steam Family is easier than ever. Although we’ll see the steps for the latter at the end of this guide, here’s how to create a Steam Family first.

1. Launch the Steam app and log in to your Steam account by entering the credentials.
2. Once logged in, hit the Steam menu on the top left and select Settings .

1. Inside Steam Settings, go to the Family section on the left sidebar and select Create or join a Steam family .

1. Now, click on the Create a Family button.

1. Enter a name for the family and then click on Create .

Invite Someone to Your Steam Family

It’s easy to invite someone to your Steam Family. Here’s how to do it.

1. Go to the Family section inside Steam Settings and click on Invite a Member .

1. Considering the account you’re inviting is already in your friends list, select the one you want to invite.

1. You can then choose Invite as Adult or Invite as Child . The latter will give you parental controls over this member.

1. Finally, click on Invite . The invitation should be sent to the account.

1. Ask your friend or family member to open Steam, and they should instantly receive an invitation alert.

1. They can click on Accept after opening this alert. Or go to Steam > Family > Accept .

1. A confirmation email will be sent to their email, and they need to click on Join Family and verify to join your family.

1. Once done, they will be added as a family member in your Family group on Steam.

Configure Parental Controls and Playtime

One of the highlights of the new Steam Families feature is that it makes it much easier to manage your family accounts, especially if you want to monitor and limit kids’ playtime.

You can configure Parental controls right from your Steam Families page. Here’s how to do it:

1. Go to Settings > Family and Manage your Steam Family.
2. Click the down arrows beside your child’s account and then turn on the Enable parental controls for this user toggle.

1. Once done, you can select Only games I choose to allot specific games your child can play. Or, you can choose All games to allow them to play any title on Steam.

1. After that, you can choose to enable or disable features like access to community content, set playtime limits, and the type of games and suggestions they get.

1. You can turn on the Set playtime limits toggle to set the playtime.

Request Games as a Child in Steam Family

Steam Family also makes it easier for the adult in the family to approve purchases from the Request section for the games when your child requests. Children in your Steam family group can send buying requests to adults, which they’ll need to approve. Upon approval, the game will be added to the account of whoever requested it.

1. Add a game to your cart on Steam and go to the Cart .
2. Once you’re here, click on Request purchase and the request will be sent to the adults in the group.

1. The adults need to go to the Requests section in Steam Families, accept the request, and pay for the game before the child can start playing it.

How to Leave a Steam Family or Remove Someone

If you no longer want to be a part of someone’s Steam Family or you want to remove someone from your Family group, here’s how to do it.

1. To leave a family group, go to Settings > Family .
2. Go to Manage your Family .
3. Click on the down arrows and select Leave Family .

1. To remove a member, go to Settings > Family > Manage your Family .
2. Click the down arrow and click on Remove Member

Do note that once you leave a Family group, you will have to wait at least a year before you can join the same group again.

Steam Family Sharing: Limitations

Now that you’ve set up and started playing your friend’s games without paying any money, let’s take a look at some of the limitations that this feature has:

• You can add up to 6 Steam accounts only.
• You can either share your whole library or don’t share anything.
• Not all games support Steam family sharing.
• If you’ve shared your library with multiple users, only one of them can access it and play the games at any given time. The number of players who can play the same game at once is directly proportional to the number of copies of the game in the family.
• The account that’s sharing holds the first priority. If you start playing a game and someone else is playing the same game, then they will be given a few minutes to save their progress and quit playing.
• Region restrictions . The accounts you share games with should be residing in the same country.

Abubakar covers Tech at Beebom, with his passion for technology tracing back to 2011 when he received a Dell Inspiron 5100 as a gift. He’s also a passionate advocate for the right-to-repair movement, believing in empowering users to maintain and extend the life of their devices. Outside the tech world, he enjoys watching anime and exploring his newfound enthusiasm for Japanese cars. In his free time, you’ll often find him immersed in Genshin Impact or researching his next gadget purchase. Before joining Beebom, he contributed to leading publications like Android Police, How-To Geek, and Fossbytes.

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There’s no better time to pick up games on a discount than during Steam sales. Valve’s storefront is known for hosting sales quite regularly, most of which offer mouth-watering discounts on the biggest AAA and indie games. While its most popular promotions are tied to seasonal sales, Steam also features more thematic discounts throughout the year. So, if you’re looking to keep up with its schedule in 2026, we’ve put together a list of the next Steam sales and their dates in this guide.

Current Steam Sale

The current Steam sale is the Typing Fest . It celebrates titles that challenge your speed and dexterity on the keyboard. The promotion kicked off on February 5 and will end on February 9 .

Image Credit: Valve/Steam

While it’s live, you can look forward to discounts on excellent typing games such as Bongo Cat, Final Sentence , and many others – some of which are among the best games on Steam .

Next Steam Sale Date and Time

The next Steam sale is the PvP Fest . As the name suggests, the sale will be all about multiplayer titles that pit you against other players in a competitive environment. The upcoming promotion will kick off on February 9 and end on February 16 .

While it’s live, you can look forward to discounts on excellent games such as Rust, For Honor and many others. To help you keep track of its arrival, we’ve put together a handy timer to count down the release of the next Steam sale:

The Steam PvP Fest is now live!

Upcoming Steam Sale Dates in 2026

The Steam sale calendar mixes genre-focused events with larger seasonal sales throughout the year. Each type of sale has its own advantages. So, while the seasonal sales offer the widest selection and often the deepest discounts, genre festivals help you discover new games in specific categories. With that said, here are all the upcoming Steam Sales in 2026:

• Typing Fest : February 5 – February 9 ( ONGOING )
• PvP Fest : February 9 – February 16
• Horse Fest : February 19 – February 23
• Steam Next Fest (February) : February 23 – March 2
• Tower Defense Fest : March 9 – March 16
• 2026 Steam Spring Sale : March 19 – March 26
• House & Home Fest : March 30 – April 6
• Hidden Object Fest : April 9 – April 13
• Medieval Fest : April 20 – April 27
• Deckbuilders Fest : May 4 – May 11
• Ocean Fest : May 18 – May 25
• Bullet Fest : June 8 – June 15
• Steam Next Fest (June) : June 15 – June 22
• 2026 Steam Summer Sale : June 25 – July 9
• Social Deduction Fest : July 13 – July 16
• Train Fest : July 20 – July 27
• Cyberpunk Fest : August 3 – August 10
• Pins & Pegs Fest : August 17 – August 20
• PvE Survival Fest : August 31 – September 7
• Programming Fest : September 10 – September 14
• Party-Based RPG Fest : September 14 – September 21
• 2026 Steam Autumn Sale : October 1 – October 8
• Cooking Fest : October 12 – October 19
• Steam Next Fest (October) : October 19 – October 26
• Steam Scream V Fest : October 26 – November 2
• Auto-Battler RPG Fest : November 16 – November 23
• 2026 Steam Winter Sale : December 17 – January 4, 2027

As you can see, the list covers all upcoming Steam sales throughout the year. We’ll be sure to update this article in case any new promotions are announced.

When is the Next Major Steam Sale?

Image Credit: Valve

The next major Steam sale will be the 2026 Spring sale event. Scheduled to kick off on March 19 , it is expected to bring fresh discounts on some of the biggest 2025 games, including the likes of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Hollow Knight: Silksong, Blue Prince, Doom: The Dark Ages, and many others. Besides this, you can look forward to deep price cuts on games from 2024 and before.

How Often Are Steam Sales?

New Steam sales pop up almost every month – a majority of which are more genre-focused “fests.” These shine the spotlight on a particular niche and offer discounts on a range of games belonging to that category. Of course, what fans eagerly await are the quarterly seasonal sales, which occur four times a year: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. These provide the widest selection of deals and the sweetest discounts.

Among the four, the Summer and Winter Steam sales are particularly noteworthy. During the former, you’ll find deep price cuts on games released in 2025, while the latter will bring some tempting price cuts on titles released this year.

The Best Steam Sale Tips

The sheer volume of games on sale, paired with eye-catching discount percentages, is enough to send our consumer brains into a frenzy. But this is far from the ideal approach to get the best value from these events. So, if you want to make the next Steam sale a shopping success, keep the following tips in mind:

Stick to Your Wishlist

I know firsthand just how tempting it is to deviate from your wish list and pick up a newly-discounted game that you’re semi-interested in. But take it from me, it’s a waste. The title in your wishlist is there for a reason. You saw its trailers, you read about it online – you’ve already put in the legwork. Trust your initial instincts and keep your wallet shut if it isn’t on sale. There’s no harm in occasionally trying out something new, but your wishlist should dictate your purchasing decisions during most sales.

Use SteamDB

SteamDB is a free-to-use database that tracks the current prices and price histories of almost every game listed on the platform. During a sale, we recommend checking out the website and using filters such as discount percentages and reviews to uncover the best deals on offer. If you’re deciding whether it’s the right time to pull the trigger on a purchase you’ve been eyeing up for a while, take a look at its price history to see if it could receive an even better discount in the future.

Keep an Eye Out for Publisher Sales

Image Credit: Valve, Ubisoft

On seemingly random weekends, publishers can take over the Steam homepage and announce beefy discounts on their games. These announcements are impossible to miss if you fire up Steam every weekend, so make sure to take full advantage. In particular, we recommend picking up publisher bundles – which usually offer two or three games for the price of one – especially if it’s a franchise you’re interested in.

Steam sales typically last for about a week, although the bigger seasonal sales can run for over two weeks.

Steam Next Fest is actually coming up quite soon. The next edition will run from February 23 to March 2.

Yes. Steam’s refund policy is always in place. If you haven’t played the game for over two hours, and it isn’t 14 days old, you can refund it.

A massive gaming nerd who’s been writing stuff on the internet since 2021, Aryan covers single-player games, RPGs, and live-service titles such as Marvel Rivals and Call of Duty: Warzone. When he isn’t clacking away at his keyboard, you’ll find him firing up another playthrough of Fallout: New Vegas.

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