Family sharing not working properly

[mcv]

I've got two issues with family sharing. The most urgent is my son being unable to play Bad North.

He plays on a Windows laptop, I play on Linux. This weekend, he was perfectly able to play Bad North, but it's possible he had Family View disabled at the time. This morning, it didn't work. It didn't even show up in his list of games.

Apparently, because it involves combat (thought cutesy abstract combat), Bad North is deemed inappropriate for him. Fine, but I should be able to override that, right? I've checked every box I could find, and now it does show up in his list of games, but if he tries to play, he gets a popup to Borrow it from me. If he clicks it, he gets "Request failed". I receive no request from this.

He shouldn't even have to borrow it, because I've already explicitly checked this game as something he can play. There's no hint of what's going wrong. He can play the free demo, but I've got the full game, and borrowing it somehow doesn't work. (I'm not playing any Steam game right now.)

I'm at a complete loss as to what's going on here.

(My other problem is less urgent. I noticed a new Familiy Management system I could add him to, I invited him, but the number of steps to verify are ridiculous, and one step seems to require me to log in as him, because he doesn't have his own mailbox. This really shouldn't be necessary. I guess this is more of a complaint than a real problem.)

[ReBoot]

You're mixing 2 topics, sharing & parental controls. Shall we regard those two separately?

[Ogami]

Thats because the old family share system you are trying to use has been deactivated by Steam.
There is now only the new "Steam Families" system.
If you want to share games with your son you have to use that, the old system will no longer work, even if you still have it set up.
You have to create a Steam Family and invite your son to it. Family View is now integrated into the new Steam Families managment.
Also in the new system your son can play games from your library at the same time as you do, so its a big improvement on that front.

Read carefully through the Steam Families FAQ and how to set it up and about the new improvements but also the new restrictions.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/054C-3167-DD7F-49D4

[mcv]

Well, that actually makes these two topics the same topic again. I didn't think the new Family thing was necessary for this, because this worked just a few days ago, and I don't think I received any notification that it wouldn't work anymore.

But I guess I'll just jump through all the hoops to get him added to our new family, then. See if that fixes the problem.

[Ogami]

Originally posted by mcv:

Well, that actually makes these two topics the same topic again. I didn't think the new Family thing was necessary for this, because this worked just a few days ago, and I don't think I received any notification that it wouldn't work anymore.

But I guess I'll just jump through all the hoops to get him added to our new family, then. See if that fixes the problem.

Technically the old system was abandoned about 6 weeks ago when the Steam Families system came out of BETA.
For users who still had the old system set up it works for a while longer but Steam has started to deactivate it for those users too over the last week.
Till the start of 2025 everyone is supposed to have switched to the new Steam Families system.

[mcv]

Somehow I managed to missed it. Anyway, adding my son to my family seems to work. Thanks!