Posts tagged parental-controls 
Steam Family Options out of beta, now available to all
The beta period for Steam Family Options has come to a close. Now all Steam users can start setting user permissions for their children's accounts. To enable Family options, simply head into the Settings tab of Steam and enable it for your own account or any Family account associated with your...
Patent points to possible Kinect-based parental controls
Tech blog Geekwire recently uncovered a U.S. patent for software which uses the Kinect to scan a potential player's body size, and restrict mature content based on their estimated age. It does so not just by examining their height, but the proportions of their body parts -- still, we think it wou...
OnLive adds parental controls, group chat, Facebook achievement posting today
Fear not, there's some good news to report about OnLive today as well. CEO Steve Perlman told Joystiq about three new features that are live on the cloud-gaming service ... right now. Group voice chat allows users to specify "groups" of people, and maintain persistent chat sessions with them, ...
Nintendo 3DS warning label: children under six shouldn't use 3D mode
Ever since the device was first shown at E3, we've been under the impression that the Nintendo 3DS is too good to be true -- three-dimensional, portable versions of beloved N64 games? That's un-possible. The other shoe we've been waiting to drop might have just done so with Nintendo's recently rele...
$99 Xbox Live Gold Family plan available this November
With Kinect, Microsoft is trying to get the whole family playing games. Now it hopes to get the whole family paying for Xbox Live as well, through a discounted "Family" offer. The Xbox Live Gold Family plan, available this November, offers a year of Xbox Live Gold membership to four different family...
Egg-man will teach you about PSN security
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has just launched a new website catered to parents looking for tips and tutorials on safe gaming for younger players. PS-PlaySafeOnline.com includes explanations of the PS3's parental control settings function, security features for registered PSN Online IDs, and ...
Diablo 3 to include parental controls, region-specific gore edits
Diablo 3 designer Jay Wilson was on hand at the recent GamesCom, where he met up with Wired and frankly discussed the game's gore. He confirmed that the title would not only have parental controls, but could have a lot of its signature violence stripped for select regions. "Yeah, we're going to ha...
Microsoft launches family timer for Xbox 360
Microsoft has finally released its 'Family Timer' for the Xbox 360, a long rumored update which was only recently confirmed by MS exec Robbie Bach last month. Once applied, the timer can be used to adjust and set the amount of available console playtime "on a daily or weekly basis...and the featur...
Wii Warm Up: Using parental controls
A recent study questioned the efficacy of parental controls on a number of electronic devices, including game consoles, and the whole thing just makes us sigh a little whilst shaking our heads. Not long ago, we test drove the parental controls features on the Wii and found them shockingly easy. Wh...
