Proposal to Extend Limit of Steam Family Group from 6 to 8

[Regular_Character]

Steam Family Sharing allows a maximum of up to 6 members belonging to the same household to share one game library. This is highly anachronistic for larger families and multi-generational families, especially in those cases where the latter have separate homes. It is hereby recommended that this limit be increased to 8.

Reasons to Increase the Limit to 8
Larger/Multi-Generational Families:
Many families in today's age are large or multi-generational. Increasing this limit to 8 would go a long way towards letting families with parents, children, and grandparents all share games without restriction.

More Gamers per Household:
With more households with multiple gamers, a limit of 8 would ensure that all the people in your house could use shared games without needing separate accounts or searching out workarounds.

Sharing Across Different Houses
For families who have members residing in separate houses, such as divorced parents or extended family members, an 8-member cap would allow the sharing of games between different houses, therefore helping to keep families closer together.

Why Not Go Beyond 8?
Abuse by Friends and Distant Relatives:
Increasing the limit above 10 or so might be an abuse, in that it would enable friends or distant relatives who live in different countries from your home country to share games. That would defeat Steam's business model and cost the revenue of game developers.

Family-Centered Sharing:
The system of family sharing can only have small, trusted groups. Raising the limit too high may change the system from one of family sharing to large-scale distributions of games, defeating its original purpose.

Ensuring Manageability and Control:
The limitation to 8 makes it easy for users to keep track of who has control over their games. A higher limit would make permissions and security more difficult to handle and thus escalate the possibilities of misuse.

Conclusion
Increasing that limit to 8 would serve larger families or households where there are multiple gamers or family members in different houses. Of course, one would not want the limit to be much higher than 8, as that would surely invite exploitation and abuse. Setting the limit at 8 strikes the right balance between flexibility and security for the Family Sharing system to function effectively and in a fair manner.

[Regular_Character]

I had to use some AI because of my bad English, I apologize

[Zinho]

Counterpoint: I have 8 kids, all living at home, all gamers. The 10 of us really wish we didn't have to choose who to exclude from the family group.

[Kiddiec͕̤̱͋̿͑͠at 🃏]

Originally posted by Zinho:

Counterpoint: I have 8 kids, all living at home, all gamers. The 10 of us really wish we didn't have to choose who to exclude from the family group.

Presumably you and your spouse are on that list too.
It's not ideal but maybe split it into 2 families of 5.

I won't get into all of the technical and ToS details about it (you'll have to make sure you're following those yourself) but here's some factors to consider :

- Who in your family do you trust the most?
I know that you're not supposed to let others play on your account while you just... walk away from a shared computer or TV and stay signed in (don't do that and let me know, it's against the ToS) - so what I'm REALLY getting at here is that you can get server-banned, VAC-banned, and game-banned, and so on, by whoever is sharing your game LEGITIMATELY through the Steam Families service. ...maybe don't add the family member that tends to cheat, tattle on family, and who gets people in the family banned from stores...
You might not know if they've ever done those things, but if you don't know, then they either don't do it, or they're pretty good at not causing negative consequences for the rest of the family despite whatever it is that they're doing which you do not know about - and that's the important thing, imo.

- Who plays on a personal device and who plays on a shared device?
ie. perhaps someone in the family more often (or better yet - exclusively) plays local multiplayer games on the TV and is an adult that doesn't feel the need to play the libraries of the other family members. Maybe that person would be perfectly fine not sharing, since they're only ever playing on their own account via legitimate local play features anyways.

- Who has the same games in their libraries already?
Those people probably have similar interests BUT also, are less likely to need to share with each other, especially if those games are multiplayer.

- Who has the largest libraries?
On the one hand, you can split them between two families to maximize sharing for everyone, OR you could put both of them into the same family, in order to maximize sharing between the two most extreme gamers in the house.

- Do any of the gamers in your family have games elsewhere?
Perhaps DRM-free copies that don't have some ToS saying that you can't just play the same game on a shared machine from the same itch, GoG, or some other service purchase or something?

- Are any of the gamers in your family Nintendo Switch gamers?
Nintendo Switch also limits you to 8 people (2 more than Steam does)
Maybe you could split it 5 x 5 on both Switch and Steam but swap ever second person who is paired for maximum sharing. idk... it's not a perfect solution but think about it.