Give families the option to create child accounts

[Bhim]

Hi, and greetings from Germany.

Gaming is not a niche like it was back in the 1990s, but just a normal and daily thing. While the news over here in the past used to pick up gaming only very rarely and almost exclusively under the subject of ‘killer games’ (👋 CS 😉) and mass shootings, today I hear the main and most traditional and old news outlets speak about E-Sports and Microsofts acquisition of Activision-Blizzard, mentioning things like CoD, Diablo, WoW with ease.

Almost every major gaming company has a way to manage this reality for families, and yes STEAM has Family sharing and family view, but it is worth nothing, when I can’t create a STEAM account for my children under the age of 13.

Up to a certain point we were totally ok with this, just letting kids play their own save games on our accounts (e.g. LEGO games) but in 2020 my daughter wanted to play Fall Guys with me and other than with for example Blizzard, Microsoft and many other companies I couldn’t create a needed account for her because STEAM has an age limitation of 13 just for creating an account. No family option, no associate account attached to a parent account, nothing.

We ended up buying a second version of Fall Guys on my wife’s account and letting her play there, but it feels really silly and of course progress, achievements and everything will be tied to this account now forever. Even a transfer once our child will turn 13 is not possible from what I gather in this forum. Of course, I am not the only one with this issue and the internets general solution seems to be to just create an account and lie about the age. But that’s stupid and problematic too, as it is a violation of terms and might cause later issues with the account, that making progress on it, unlocking games and achievements one of course would want to keep and not risk being banned and closed for good.

So Valve, what’s going on? Why no family accounts? I wouldn’t mind verification on it. Give us the ability to create accounts for our kids and share libraries with them, but also buy games for those accounts, that we want to play together. Yes, some effort is attached to this (manage friends, allowances and so on), but right now you have simply have many under aged players unmanaged around anyways and simply tolerate this.

Best regards,

Bhim

[Bhim]

Hey Nx Machina, that sounds reasonable, BUT, back when the subject came up, I asked STEAM support about this and they said this was not the case and I couldn't to this. I'll re-check and read terms again though, maybe I got it wrong. Thx for the hint! :-)

[Bhim]

Quickly scoured through the Terms of Service again and to me it doesn't sound like this is something that's meant to be done.

While it can be read as 'the person that creates the account has to be 13+ years old' it also clearly states that 'STEAM is not meant for children under 13 years' and 'Valve won't knowingly collect personal data from children under the age of 13'. Also 'you are not allowed to give your account data to a third person without Valves direct consent'. Only in the privacy policy it says, after repeating that 13 is the minimum age for account creation, that 'if in some countries a higher age limit might exist for the collection of personal data, a parents consent is required before creating a STEAM account'.

All taken from the German TOS and Privacy Policy in pour case of course. ;-)

Also I cant access the old support tickets apparently(?) to double check what exactly support wrote back then. But I remember that the person answering my ticket was clear about creating a account for a child under 13 was not a possibility.

Thus, my request above addressed at Valve to find a modern solution for this, e.g. a family account with corelated or linked kids accounts that can turn into full accounts at age 13 or something likewise. :-)

[Crazy Tiger]

You are allowed to create an account for your child. It's even recommended to create it together and use Family View to limit their accounts on what they can see and/or do.

[The End]

Originally posted by Bhim:

Hey Nx Machina, that sounds reasonable, BUT, back when the subject came up, I asked STEAM support about this and they said this was not the case and I couldn't to this. I'll re-check and read terms again though, maybe I got it wrong. Thx for the hint! :-)

Setting up Family View
We encourage you to create a Steam account with your child. If there are features of Steam that you would like to exclude from the experience, you can restrict access using Family View. You may also choose to enable Family View on your own Steam account if you would rather they share your Steam Account.

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6B1A-66BE-E911-3D98

Nothing wrong with creating an account for your child.

[Bhim]

Hi and thanky for pointing me to the Family FAQ. I guess you are reffering to the "We encourage you to create a Steam account with your child." part at the top. Yet the FAQ page doesn't mention any age description but terms and the account cration page do...

I'll just take the question to support again,a s the question came again in our houesehold anyways. ;-)

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Bhim:

Hi and thanky for pointing me to the Family FAQ. I guess you are reffering to the "We encourage you to create a Steam account with your child." part at the top. Yet the FAQ page doesn't mention any age description but terms and the account cration page do...

I'll just take the question to support again,a s the question came again in our houesehold anyways. ;-)

Again you've been told the answer. The person creating the account has to be 13 years old or older aka you to accept the terms. If you want to make it for a kid then YOU make the account, use family view, and set the limits.

Support doesn't deal with questions like your asking and will send you the same link as The End.

YOU make the account, YOU set up family view and boom you have a kids account.

[Crazy Tiger]

The 13 years is only mentioned because of COPPA. It doesn't actually mean you can't create an account for a kid under 13.

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3043858334658500886/#c3043858334658797828

[MoonC A T]

Originally posted by Bhim:

Hi and thanky for pointing me to the Family FAQ. I guess you are reffering to the "We encourage you to create a Steam account with your child." part at the top. Yet the FAQ page doesn't mention any age description but terms and the account creation page do...

Because with the proper and implied parental supervision, age is not important. The TOS is referring to an unsupervised account.

Games like "It's Spring Again" are clearly made for very very young children, well under 13.

[Bhim]

The main issue here remains, that any account I'll create would remain my account indefinitely.

As the kids messed up playtime and achievements on our accounts so much now already, we'll probably just wait for them to turn 13 (might be 16 for Germany actually) and then get their own accounts. 🤪😑

It's really surprising how Microsoft of all companies does a much better job with this. Both kids have Microsoft accounts that are associated to our full accounts within a family group, keeping things separate. We can purchase games just for the kids on their accounts, playtime and achievements are logged there etc. Should they eventually leave the managed family group, their accounts will stay their accounts and be full accounts that they own from my understanding.

Yet sharing purchases is either horrible* there, while sharing subscriptions like Microsoft 365 (and Game Pass in some countries) is super easy, which is really strange as it’s again basic functionality that Apple and Google offer as well in the respective stores, with some restrictions though again.

Well, seems like no offers the full package.

------------------
*tedious way of purchase sharing in the Microsoft Store explained: https://learn.microsoft.com/de-de/archive/blogs/henrikn/sharing-windows-10-store-apps-with-your-family

[Brian9824]

Answer hasn't changed, you already can and are encouraged to make accounts for your kids.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Bhim:

The main issue here remains, that any account I'll create would remain my account indefinitely.

Nah, you can easily create an account with your kid(s) in a manner that the proofs of ownership are with your kid(s).

Originally posted by Bhim:

It's really surprising how Microsoft of all companies does a much better job with this. Both kids have Microsoft accounts that are associated to our full accounts within a family group, keeping things separate. We can purchase games just for the kids on their accounts, playtime and achievements are logged there etc. Should they eventually leave the managed family group, their accounts will stay their accounts and be full accounts that they own from my understanding.

Steam has Family View. Works pretty good.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Steam Valve ToS is hypocritical. I do not think business lawyers helped them to write it out.

[Brian9824]

Originally posted by Wynters:

Steam Valve ToS is hypocritical. I do not think business lawyers helped them to write it out.

Its not hypocritical at all for this, its just people don't read it properly. For instance having to be 13+ years of age to create an account doesn't mean a parent can't create an account for a child.

[Bhim]

Of course I could create accounts for my kids easily, yet Valve support told me directly, that thoose account would remain my accounts indefinitely legaly. They even stated, that the kids could create accounts for themselfs then when turning 13(+, depending on country) to then have accounts in their respective ownership. What they didn't adress was my question if achievements, progress and purchases would be transverable, but looking at TOS and general handling, it clearly wouldn't.

[Bhim]

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:

Nah, you can easily create an account with your kid(s) in a manner that the proofs of ownership are with your kid(s).

Please detail this then. :-)