Valve

Valve’s original iteration of the Steam Family Sharing system has been up and running for over 10 years now, and its long-overdue upgrade is finally on the docket. Indeed, Valve has just announced the all-new Steam Families system, which delivers substantial upgrades to Family Sharing in key areas. As per Valve’s own blog post, Steam Families is about to replace the aging Family Sharing feature for good. Not immediately, mind, as Families is currently only available via the Beta version of Steam, but the full replacement…

Jason Cipriani/ZDNETIf you have multiple gamers in your family, you'll want to pay attention to how Valve has overhauled Steam's family sharing system.Starting today, the new Steam Families system gives you not only more parental controls, but makes some big changes to how games can be shared. Essentially, Families combines Steam's two current systems – Family View, which lets parents control what games and features are accessed, and Family Sharing, which lets family members and their guests play one another's…

It’s no secret that Helldivers 2 has enjoyed a large amount of success since it was released in February. In fact, it ended up knocking Steam Deck off the top place on Steam, something that doesn’t happen too often. However, Valve’s handheld PC has, once again, reclaimed its title. As of right now, the Deck is back at the number one spot on the Top Sellers list, pushing Arrowhead Games’ shooter down to number two. According to the data, Helldivers 2 has been on the list for nine weeks, though a good chunk of that time…

This is getting a bit weird now. Two weeks ago, Steam broke its concurrent player record, registering 34.6 million users. One week later, it broke through that number, logging over 35 million players using the platform at the same time. Seven days later, it’s gone and broken the record yet again. According to figures from the third-party website SteamDB, over 36 million concurrent players were using Steam over the weekend. The screenshot posted to Twitter/X shows the exact figure as 36,294,835. However, the most recent…

Exactly one week ago, I mentioned how Steam achieved a concurrent player record of over 34.6 million users. Well, guess what? It’s gone and topped that again, possibly owing its latest milestone numbers to the perfect storm of old games with new updates and new games being…well, new. In the latest statistics over on Steam itself, the number of concurrent players reached 35,377,613 in the last 24 hours or so, breaking the previous record that was set just last week. In an era in which gamers feel more cynical and…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends The Steam Deck OLED is starting to show burn-in issues. YouTuber Wulff Den released a report on the Steam Deck OLED, showing it suffered from OLED burn-in after 1,500 hours of screen time. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a torture test on the Steam Deck OLED, but Wulff Den’s experiment is particularly potent. The YouTuber was among the only people to put the Nintendo Switch OLED to the test on the burn-in front, and the consistent updates over the course of two years remain some of…

Jacob Roach / Digital Trends I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which, as a self-proclaimed PC gaming snob, would have presented a problem for me in the past. After all, a console exclusive like Rebirth just doesn’t fit into my typical pattern of gaming, which oscillates between desktop at home and Steam Deck on the go. But I’ve found a solution, opening up the world of third-party apps and breaking the mold for the Steam Deck. It’s allowed me to game far beyond my Steam library, revealing the…

Having turned 20 last year and being a dominant force in digital PC gaming, it’s hard to imagine Steam got off to a rocky start when it launched in 2003. However, here we are, and the Valve service continues to reign supreme, as it reaches another concurrent player milestone. According to the latest figures from SteamDB, 34,649,583 players were using Steam over the weekend. To put that into perspective (not that it really needs it), Worldometer shows the population of the UK is over 67.8 million people. This means…

If you haven’t played Black Mesa, the unofficial (yet wholly endorsed by Valve) remake of Half-Life, it’s definitely worth checking out. For those of us who have played – and enjoyed – it, the team responsible for it is teasing a new game that’s currently in the pipeline. A video uploaded to YouTube by developer Crowbar Collective (thanks, GamesRadar) gives us just 22 seconds of something the studio is working on. All we get is the company logo followed by a colorful symbol that leaves us non the wiser. And that’s…

As the go-to digital storefront for many PC gamers, Steam has dominated the market for the better part of 20 years. Aside from the fact that it has millions of games in its growing selection, regular sales and events continue to be a mild threat to a lot of people’s finances. With that in mind, the latest Steam event will commence today and, much like the Pirates vs. Ninjas sale that took place in January, this one also pits one foe against another. In this case, the Dinos vs. Robots Fest will have the large, scaly…