Setting up steam account for a child.

bigmike20vt

bigmike20vt

bigmike20vt

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My lad is 10 next month. I know its technically not age appropriate however on holiday there was a ps4 in our lodge and he played spiderman on it - the 2018 game.

He really wants it for his birthday and to be fair it isnt that bad - hell his mates play GTA V as does my lad when he is around their house - i have told him he is not playing that here!.

He wants it for his birthday but would like his own copy on his own account not playing it on mine. whilst i have an old PS4 i dont want to get it for that really as its a dead end format now and he has shown no interest in wanting a ps5.

So i was thinking of making him a steam account. Sooner or later he will have his own pc, and until then he can play on my steamdeck with it.

3 questions

1) if i create a childs account will i be ok adding games outside of his age rating on an adhoc basis (i dont want to unlock it for everything but happy to make individual decisions on different games

2) when he comes old enough is it easy then to remove the locks and hand over the account?

3) is it easy to have multiple steam accounts on 1 steamdeck?

thanks
 
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Why not just buy a ps5?

Sooner or later he will have access to steam and pc might be true. But there is a hell of a lot more nasties via pc than there will be via a ps5.
 
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opethdisciple said:
Why not just buy a ps5?

Sooner or later he will have access to steam and pc might be true. But there is a hell of a lot more nasties via pc than there will be via a ps5.
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because none of his friends have one, and chances are he will want a switch 2 at some point as that is what his friends do use.

Also he is going to need a pc sooner or later anyway so would rather start building a collection up on that and for now give him access to my steamdeck.... then there is the whole online subscription thing. if he wanted a ps5 i would consider it as a main present...... but not buying it if he hasnt even asked for one (the difference is a game for £15 vs a console for............... a lot more and then the game on top!.

bear in mind this isnt his main present we already have that set up.
 
I'm looking at this too. This page helped a lot.

Apparently you can't create a Steam account for a child under 13 anyway, so you have to create one saying he's over 13, then add him to your Family. You can then choose to share certain titles from your library with him, and any purchases he wants to make can be sent to you for approval (and payment) first.

Beware that if a family member gets banned for cheating while playing your copy of a game, you (the game owner) will also be banned in that game. Although somehow "other family members are not impacted"...?

He'll always have his own Steam account, so when he's old enough he can leave your Steam Family (if he wants to) and add his own payment method.

My only grey area at the momemnt is how the Online Safety thing plays into this. Most of the info I've found pre-dates its implementation.
 
Steam family is a great, the parental controls are good (see link above) and initially it saves you a lot of money not having to buy games a 2nd time. Just keep in mind if he ever decides to leave the family group in future, shared access is lost. So it's a bit of a double edge sword, while its a cheap way to give him access to many of your existing games, when buying new games you have carefully consider on whose account they are bought.

I also want to say it's cool to see parents being responsible and proactive about these things for once. There's so many parental controls out there which go ignored, it's good when people make an effort.
 
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