Its not technically always a year, its one year SINCE you last joined a family.
So if you are a member of a family for 7 months, then leave or get kicked you only have to wait 5 months before you can join another.

Also regarding your story, DONT invite people to your family as "adult" unless you are 100% sure they are reliable and you have access to them in real life.
What you described is exactly the reason its meant for single household family members.
"child" accounts cant disolve the group or invite/kick anyone but they have no further restrictions if you dont turn on the parental control options.

Originally posted by Ogami:

Its not technically always a year, its one year SINCE you last joined a family.
So if you are a member of a family for 7 months, then leave or get kicked you only have to wait 5 months before you can join another.

Also regarding your story, DONT invite people to your family as "adult" unless you are 100% sure they are reliable and you have access to them in real life.
What you described is exactly the reason its meant for single household family members.
"child" accounts cant disolve the group or invite/kick anyone but they have no further restrictions if you dont turn on the parental control options.

The owner of the original was my ex-bestfriend not just some random dude we just met. Also most of the group has to wait around 11 months before they can rejoin. The year long wait should be removed regardless of my own situation because a whole year is diabolical.

people will abuse the feature if it was like a month or 2, i see a year cool down is actually good make people think twice before joining or trying to leave

Maybe the year wait can be somehow justified by steam, but please for the love of god remove the cooldown on slots, as it makes no sense that we cant add a new person because some 5 months ago we had to kick someone, this is the part that i think should have the wait absolutely removed it doesnt make any sense

Originally posted by jimi:

Maybe the year wait can be somehow justified by steam, but please for the love of god remove the cooldown on slots, as it makes no sense that we cant add a new person because some 5 months ago we had to kick someone, this is the part that i think should have the wait absolutely removed it doesnt make any sense

I think its because the person who left can rejoin the same group without a cooldown.
So the slot is "reserved" for that person to rejoin.
Only after the cooldown for leaving expires does the slot become "free".

Perhaps as a compromise, allow each user one courtesy leave before making them go through the cooldown?
Especially with the system in beta right now, a lot of people may join a group initially but end up breaking their previous family sharing connections in the process, and be unable to restore them under the new system.

Originally posted by ْSmoke™:

people will abuse the feature if it was like a month or 2, i see a year cool down is actually good make people think twice before joining or trying to leave

Abuse how so? The group system is already so very heavily limited with checks to house-hold, a year long timer, and a limitation to sharing architecture.

I vastly prefer much of the old system since I care share with a select group of people I care about and the only draw back being that I can't access my library when it's in use. But that's INFINITELY better then the current system.

If there is a legitimate case for abuse, a year long cooldown does little compared to other existing limitations (which are also too strict in my opinion.)