I second this. Families can be larger than 5/6 people. This would be especially useful to additionally monitor playtime across all children, and we'd be able to manage purchases better too.

+1. I've got a family of 9, not including the parents, all not within the same household.

I already tried asking if they can increase my cap for me since I do have a larger family and they said they can't help me! We need solutions for larger families too!

World wide, the average family is 3.45 people (rounded to 4), so Valve allows two more then the average by allowing 6.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/family-size-by-country

"Globally speaking, the average family size worldwide hovers around 3.45 people per household in 2023."

So there is already an allowance for more then the average family size.

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

World wide, the average family is 3.45 people (rounded to 4), so Valve allows two more then the average by allowing 6.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/family-size-by-country

"Globally speaking, the average family size worldwide hovers around 3.45 people per household in 2023."

So there is already an allowance for more then the average family size.

Fine then. Doesn't help the fact that my family is still larger than what they made room for. I don't mind needing to verify family connections, if they just increase the cap for those of us with larger families than Steam planned for.

Originally posted by CrioChamberTTV:

Fine then. Doesn't help the fact that my family is still larger than what they made room for. I don't mind needing to verify family connections, if they just increase the cap for those of us with larger families than Steam planned for.

My father-in-law is the middle child of 14 kids. They continuously say they have at least 500 family members living in California.

So, what should the limit be? 14? 500?

Biggest known family in the US is 21 people. Mom, dad, one son and 18 daughters.

There is a family in India that is said to have 167 people in it.

No matter what is chosen, there will ALWAYS be someone with a bigger family, who wants more. This is why the average is taken into account.

Besides, the more people, the greater your chances of getting a VAC ban from someone borrowing your game and cheating in it. May want to consider that as well.

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

Originally posted by CrioChamberTTV:

Fine then. Doesn't help the fact that my family is still larger than what they made room for. I don't mind needing to verify family connections, if they just increase the cap for those of us with larger families than Steam planned for.

My father-in-law is the middle child of 14 kids. They continuously say they have at least 500 family members living in California.

So, what should the limit be? 14? 500?

No matter what is chosen, there will ALWAYS be someone with a bigger family, who wants more. This is why the average is taken into account.

Besides, the more people, the greater your chances of getting a VAC ban from someone borrowing your game and cheating in it. May want to consider that as well.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I understand law-of-averages, but they still should've had methods in place to assist those who might have more than what they initially capped to.

Discord has a limit of roughly 100,000 users per server, but they increase that cap as necessary if it's a community-based server as well under certain criteria, just need to contact their support and provide evidence of what you're doing and why you need the cap increase.

Steam should have a similar method here. I'm not saying for all of my aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, if that's what you're getting at, but those of us with more close family members than the average user.

Originally posted by CrioChamberTTV:

That's exactly what I'm saying. I understand law-of-averages, but they still should've had methods in place to assist those who might have more than what they initially capped to.

Discord has a limit of roughly 100,000 users per server, but they increase that cap as necessary if it's a community-based server as well under certain criteria, just need to contact their support and provide evidence of what you're doing and why you need the cap increase.

Steam should have a similar method here. I'm not saying for all of my aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, if that's what you're getting at, but those of us with more close family members than the average user.

This is really what I'd advocate for too. Not a be-all-end-all "you can have up to 6 family members", but a case-by-case basis. Steam obviously reserves the right to set the family limit, but I think they should really consider family sizes larger than 6. If not that, then allow a parent/guardian to be in multiple families so they can manage more than 4/5 children.

I am also for this change. It appears that they already have limitations on if you are in the household or not, i.e. IP address verification of some sort, so if that is the case, why limit it to 6, why not 10 or even more? Why does it matter if they are locking it to your location?

There is a year lock, it isn't like you can have a bunch of people out to your house sharing games that you don't live with and just cycle it, I think it is reasonable to either have this change or some verification that they are family so we can add them.

I think some of the changes are great, I have been wanting to see the parental controls added for a while and the borrowing a game while not being on the game, but still on your library is a great change. However if you a spouse and even one additional child than 5, as in my case, you have to choose the one to drop and not have the control and sharing with. Kinda rotten...

This! I really like the flexible ideas suggested in the comments, that would be really helpful

One thing I do want to point out, is that many members here are considering a "family" what in reality they're speaking of is a household, in my case we're 5 in a household, however, I have uncles, aunts, cousins, my partner, my partner's brother... They are family too, and they've been in the old family system, so why not with the new one?

Originally posted by DUB5TY:

This! I really like the flexible ideas suggested in the comments, that would be really helpful :HeartMDS:

One thing I do want to point out, is that many members here are considering a "family" what in reality they're speaking of is a household, in my case we're 5 in a household, however, I have uncles, aunts, cousins, my partner, my partner's brother... They are family too, and they've been in the old family system, so why not with the new one?

Yep, I didn't expected so many replies, but they were really good.

The flexibility would be amazing.

And yes, this is the point, before we could have up to 10 members, and I had it, now some of my family members got out of it.

My request was not based solely on my wishes, but on what I was used to have with the previous system.

We're exactly 6 people in my family, so we were very lucky. Yet I wouldn't mind having 2 more slots for our alts.

Yeah cause each and every member of your mammoth family has a Steam account and regularly plays video games. My family is bigger than 6 too, we just picked those who would make the most use of this and got on with our day.

Originally posted by SlipSlot:

Yeah cause each and every member of your mammoth family has a Steam account and regularly plays video games. My family is bigger than 6 too, we just picked those who would make the most use of this and got on with our day.

That's a very ignorant way to look at this... We did the same, picked who would get the most use out of this, but at least our desire to be able to encompass everyone who actively uses steam in our family led us to be vocal about it rather than just go by what arbitrary limit corporate is setting. The corporations *want* you to be quiet so they can royally screw you over, and you just fell in line. Good job.

Allowing up to 6 people to share a single copy of a digital game, holy crap Valve, please don't bend me over any further I'm not sure how much more I can take!

Please. I've seen corporations screw over their customer base more times than I can count, this ain't it - you're using the wrong paintbrush.

I find it quite strange that it would bother our personal suggestions, being in the nicest and most understanding way possible. Yet, I think we get your point, and the company's, so we're just openly sharing our thoughts and suggestions, that is all, there was no need to demonstrate attitude.

Stay kind, that's all I will add to this matter