Steam Getting Parental Controls via "Kid Mode"

[OneCatch]

I would like a "family mode" where I could play a game from my profile on my PC and my brother play another game from the same profile on his laptop. A game can only be played by one person at a time.

It makes no sense that we would need to buy the same game 2 times.

Well, you already need to buy two copies if you're doing that on console (splitscreen aside).
I'm against most forms of DRM, but that restriction is, imo, reasonable. You can always get bundles of the game for a discount which is in fact better than on console.

What would be good would be if you could permanently disassociate a particular game from your account. That way you'd lose access to the game, but could sell it or trade it in without restriction.
It would only work for physical copies like the Orange Box and Total War and stuff, but would be a really good feature.

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OT, this is probably a good idea. It'll give parents peace of mind, and mean that 10 year olds who've got Steam for a sports game won't stumble upon Hotline Miami or whatever.

I've always thought that it's daft that you have to enter DOB to view some trailers on the Steam Store, but can buy and play anything without restriction.

 

[Hagi]

When you deny acess you have to explain it in such a way that the child would understand, and not just say "this is bad" because thats never going to teach him anything.

So what's so bad about this Steam functionality then? If denying access is fine as long as you give a proper explanation then what's the issue?

Did I miss a ' You can't explain to your kid why you block their game, you are only allowed to laugh maniacally' clause somewhere?

I just don't see how it's this evil restricting of information you're making it out to be. Restricting information from children and providing the tools to do so isn't in any way inherently bad, it's all a matter of allowing access at the right time when and only when you've taught the child sufficient skills to deal with it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with these tools. They can certainly be used by lazy and bad parents to bad ends, but that's the parent's fault. They can also be used for perfectly good purposes, it's perfectly reasonably to block access to your horror games when you have a very curious child who's prone to nightmares. It's also perfectly reasonable to block access to all games at certain hours or after certain hours played when you have a child prone to losing track of time and you have other responsibilities that prevent you from monitoring your child at all times.

Just because you have bad experiences with your own parents restricting your access to games for no reason beyond their own prejudice doesn't mean that that somehow makes these tools at fault or those providing them. It's the parent's responsibility on how they use these tools and as long as there are reasonable and justified uses for them there's no wrong in providing such tools.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

LoL! Now Steam is even becoming the better console!

 

[Johnson McGee]

Still waiting for my 'sell used games' mode and 'take up less system resources' mode Valve.

 

[TiberiusEsuriens]

Well, steam is making a tool for parents to restrict their children it seems. Because blocking off information is always easier than teaching children to be responsible. Always blame everyone but the parent. always.

Children will ALWAYS find a way to be irresponsible

 

[Strazdas]

When you deny acess you have to explain it in such a way that the child would understand, and not just say "this is bad" because thats never going to teach him anything.

So what's so bad about this Steam functionality then? If denying access is fine as long as you give a proper explanation then what's the issue?

Did I miss a ' You can't explain to your kid why you block their game, you are only allowed to laugh maniacally' clause somewhere?

I just don't see how it's this evil restricting of information you're making it out to be. Restricting information from children and providing the tools to do so isn't in any way inherently bad, it's all a matter of allowing access at the right time when and only when you've taught the child sufficient skills to deal with it.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with these tools. They can certainly be used by lazy and bad parents to bad ends, but that's the parent's fault. They can also be used for perfectly good purposes, it's perfectly reasonably to block access to your horror games when you have a very curious child who's prone to nightmares. It's also perfectly reasonable to block access to all games at certain hours or after certain hours played when you have a child prone to losing track of time and you have other responsibilities that prevent you from monitoring your child at all times.

Just because you have bad experiences with your own parents restricting your access to games for no reason beyond their own prejudice doesn't mean that that somehow makes these tools at fault or those providing them. It's the parent's responsibility on how they use these tools and as long as there are reasonable and justified uses for them there's no wrong in providing such tools.

ability to abuse. Steam does not ask you to explain your kids it properly. it lets you just to block it. and thus we will have once again same situation where "you cant because i said so" being the majority of parenting.
Restricting information tools would be good if everyone was responsbile. Since they arent, we are left with slightly orwelian view.

Granted my experience with "all children" is limited, but i always saw that children that are prone to nightmares explicitly said no when i offerend them to watch a horror movie with me. thats becasue they understood the relation between horror movies and their imagination. And not to mention that there is no real direct correlation anyway, children who never saw horror movies had nightmares and those that did hadnt and so on.
As for hour limiter, as long as its not abused to "i think you sit there too long". You should restrict time spent if this hampers his other duties. you should not force him to change a hobby just because you dont like gaming though.
We have ISP providing a internet acess limiting tool to parents. pretty much everyone i know of that age frame suffers from the consequences of abusing such system.
maybe our culture just sucks too much to trust people to not abuse this.

 

[Lieju]

Werent ready for? you mean you failed to prepare them for?

Yes, because all entertainment is the same and your 7-year olds should be immediately prepared for all the R-rated stuff.

Yes, parents can already do that and it only serves to illustrate the point of how silly it is to begin with.

Your argument was that parents shouldn't have this option because they would abuse it. But if they want to monitor their kids' gaming or stop them from doing it they can do it. But isn't it a better option for them to do it with parental controls like this, instead of taking away the computer alltogether?

You didn't answer me. Do you have kids or indeed have you looked after children ever? How old are you? (EDIT: according to your bio you are old enough to possibly have children, though.)
Because you seem to have some rather unrealistic expectations about parenting.

How do you think children should be 'prepared', and how would you monitor their entertainment, if at all?
At what age would you give them access to the computer? (Because according to your logic they should at that age be ready for anything they find in the Internet.)

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Children, like all humans, are logical.

You are not from planet Earth. Children are the most irrational and illogical naturally occurring creatures that exist.

 

[Hagi]

ability to abuse. Steam does not ask you to explain your kids it properly. it lets you just to block it. and thus we will have once again same situation where "you cant because i said so" being the majority of parenting.
Restricting information tools would be good if everyone was responsbile. Since they arent, we are left with slightly orwelian view.

Granted my experience with "all children" is limited, but i always saw that children that are prone to nightmares explicitly said no when i offerend them to watch a horror movie with me. thats becasue they understood the relation between horror movies and their imagination. And not to mention that there is no real direct correlation anyway, children who never saw horror movies had nightmares and those that did hadnt and so on.
As for hour limiter, as long as its not abused to "i think you sit there too long". You should restrict time spent if this hampers his other duties. you should not force him to change a hobby just because you dont like gaming though.
We have ISP providing a internet acess limiting tool to parents. pretty much everyone i know of that age frame suffers from the consequences of abusing such system.
maybe our culture just sucks too much to trust people to not abuse this.

You can abuse quite literally everything, that's no excuse at all. I could club you to death with my laptop, doesn't make laptops bad. Just makes me a rather messed up individual.

What needs to be looked at if there are legitimate uses and, if so, if they outweigh possible abuses. Here we're talking about an account, managed by parents and thus in all likelihood paid for, getting tools to restrict access to that account. As has been mentioned every possible abuse with this system can already be done by parents, they already have the power to completely take away a child's computer, any video games he or she possesses and any money he or she can use to buy them. As such this system adds no new possible abuses, every wrong you can do with it a parent can also do without it.

As I've said there are legitimate uses for it. The children you personally know that have nightmares may be wise enough to avoid horror materials but that's not all children. If you're looking for a real example I could point you at my younger brother. When he was much younger he was very prone to nightmares, yet whenever confronted with a horror movie he'd watch it to prove to those around him that he wasn't afraid. By now he's grown up and wise enough to not do stuff like that anymore, but as I said, children do stupid shit even when they've been given good explanations as to why not. Some mistakes just have to be made and experienced to learn from, and it's up to a parent to ensure those mistakes occur only when a child's learned the tools to deal with said mistakes. Until then access should be restricted.

As for your correlation erm... babbling it is I guess. That doesn't make any sense, it doesn't work like that. Correlation doesn't mean something is the only cause. A power outage definitely has a correlation to electrical devices shutting down, that doesn't mean that it's the only reason devices shut down or that when it occurs all electrical devices shut down ( some might have internal batteries ). It in fact, like horror and nightmares, has more than correlation it has causation. Likewise horror movies can certainly cause nightmares, which doesn't mean they always cause them and that nightmares are always caused by them. It just means they can cause them.

This system only gives new options, it gives good parents the option to be much more selective in what to restrict and what not to restrict. Instead of taking away an entire computer they can now take away only a single game, still allowing everything else. It doesn't give any new abuses, parents already had the power to take away a game by simply taking away an entire computer, a child's allowance and various other means. There's nothing wrong with this system. There's only something wrong with the parents who abuse it.

 

[Smertnik]

I have to wonder how this would tie in with Steam's SSA since officially account sharing is not allowed.

 

[Monsterfurby]

Nothing, absolutely nothing about having the ability to limit access to your Steam account for kids or other family members impedes your ability to still be a good parent. It's an additional feature, nothing more, and I really don't see why there is even any debate about that.

Is the fact that a "because I said so" attitude of parenting is becoming more prominent, especially amongst younger parents, worrying? Yes, it is.

Does a good parent reason with their child and work *with* them to teach them what's right and wrong? You bet.

Does that have anything to do with steam adding this feature? No. Not. At. All.

 

[Elate]

Wow, that negative reaction was unexpected. In a time when we as gamers are being blamed constantly rather than parents being given responsibility, I would have thought Valve making parents responsible would have been a massively positive thing. It means that publishers and devs can no longer be held accountable, no parents have more tools to limit what their children have access to.

But no, maybe people here just require something to ***** about either way?

 

[uncanny474]

Features like these are great. However, many parents either don't care or are too technology-illiterate to activate something like this. But at least some may find good use for this.
I once configured parental controls in Windows Vista and it was pretty horrible, would let some stuff through that clearly needed filtering, blocked legitimate content and constantly asked for the password even for operations that didn't need checking. And I'm normally pretty good with setting up and configuring...

I also wonder which rating system it will rely on. For example, the German USK rating and the US-ratings can be pretty different with violence and nudity/sexuality often being rated very differently.
So how is it applied? Do the parents decide which system to use? Or is it based on which Steam servers you are connected to? In that case it could be circumvented by choosing a server in other countries.

1. Everyone knows that Microsoft and proprietary Microsoft "software" is garbage and that it's only being held up by habit. Most virus blockers have parental blockers built-in; I use Kaspersky, and I've had success with it, though it IS easier to get around than most parental software.

2. Base it off of which servers you're connected to and make changing servers PIN protected? Assuming they think of that, of course.

I have to wonder how this would tie in with Steam's SSA since officially account sharing is not allowed.

You label the entire account a "kid account", and the PIN is there to prevent them from circumventing the childblocks, stopping them from spending your money (since Steam saves your credit card info), and whatever else you can think of?

 

[Smertnik]

You label the entire account a "kid account", and the PIN is there to prevent them from circumventing the childblocks, stopping them from spending your money (since Steam saves your credit card info), and whatever else you can think of?

Fair enough. Although the spending money part is easily avoidable by either buying games from another Steam account or deleting cc information after a purchase (or not using a cc in the first place).

 

[Glaice]

What ever happened to responsible parenting in this world, especially the developed countries?

 

[SSJBlastoise]

LoL! Now Steam is even becoming the better console!

Umm, the PS3 and 360 have had this for years so the correct term would be they are finally catching up to consoles in this sense.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I don't see any harm in giving a parental control option.

Nice to know the account parents make for kids can be monitored.

 

[GoaThief]

I think there's a lot of young people posting in this thread, perhaps some are afraid of losing access to parts of their game collection on their guardian's say so? There's no way in hell these parental controls are a bad thing, some of the complaints and claims are pretty ludicrous.

Children, like all humans, are logical.

You are not from planet Earth. Children are the most irrational and illogical naturally occurring creatures that exist.

Indeed.

 

[Slash2x]

*reads title* Oh lord the forum will have exploded in opinions from people who have no children arguing about people who ignore their kids.... And the responsible parents will see it as a tool to let their kids play safely on the same system as them..... *checks posts* YUUUP!!

Well this should get interesting

 

[WeepingAngels]

Well, steam is making a tool for parents to restrict their children it seems. Because blocking off information is always easier than teaching children to be responsible. Always blame everyone but the parent. always.

Agreed.

Parents should know everything about every game on Steam but as usual those lazy parents are too busy working to do that.