Comment by rmunn
11 hours ago
Reading through Steam's list of what's allowed or not, it all seems very reasonable:
* Up to 6 people can share games in a family account
* Each account can join as an adult or a child
* No age verification done, the person who created the account simply marks each invitation as "join as an adult" or "join as a child"
* Adult members have parental controls over child members and can control which games they have access to
* Child members must get purchases approved by an adult member
* No requirement for any particular family structure, like limiting it to two adults. Six roommates sharing a large house can form a Steam family if they want.
The only thing that is even slightly restrictive is the one-year cooldown on joining a new Steam family group if you leave the old one, and even that is pretty reasonable. (Without that, people would abuse the system by saying "Hey, join my family group real quick and I'll share my copy of Portal 2 with you, then leave the group when you're done). Plus, if you're rejoining the family group you just left then there's no cooldown, so "Oops, I clicked the Leave button by mistake" doesn't penalize you.
One thing Steam doesn't advertise is that all family members MUST be all using the same IP address or it refuses to link the accounts.
If you use a VPN then gl
I think that's the VPN rather than the IP. I've had a family set up with someone I don't live with for years and it's never been an issue. The initial account enrollment has to be in the physically same location but after that you can roam.