PC gaming guides

What to set up first

Steam, Epic and Microsoft all keep their controls in the account rather than on the machine, so what you configure follows your child to any PC they sign in on — and, just as importantly, so a second account signed in on the same computer is outside everything you set. Check which account your child actually plays under before spending time on the settings.

Money is the larger risk on both. Storefront balances, in-game currency and the third-party sites promising free V-Bucks or cheap item trades are where PC gaming costs families most, and none of it is touched by the content settings.

A PC has no single parental-control layer the way a console does. Windows covers the machine and the browser, each storefront covers its own games, and a game bought outside either is covered by neither. Expect to set things in two or three places rather than one, and expect the gaps to be between them rather than inside any of them.

Voice chat is usually the reason a parent arrives at this section, and on a PC it often is not in the game. Children talk on Discord over the top of whatever they are playing, so muting voice inside a game changes nothing about who they spend the evening talking to.