Transmission

I'm fairly sure he is talking about the queue system since it will only count active torrents towards the max allowed, and from the fact that it "happens" when he starts torrents.

Correct. Go to preferences, look under Download Queue, Maximum active downloads:

It's not a huge issue, just curious ...

If you change the maximum active downloads it doesn't always take affect until you close out Transmission and open it again.. I decreased my maximum number allowed and started some paused torrent, but it acted like I was allowing an unlimited amount of active torrents. This too was solved by closing ...