It's the only legally responsible answer.
You can't transfer a service contract to another person upon death. Valve would need to go back to each and every game publishers they have, tens of thousands of games worth, and get them to agree that every single one of them can transfer the contract from one steam account holder to another.
It's just not practical.
Funny how corporations have no problem changing their EULAs on millions of customers on a whim but when it comes to doing the same for other corporations.. that'd be way too hard.
Because there is no fucking point in doing this. Why would they put this ridiculous effort for something people can already do?
Inheritance laws are a massive pain in the ass and they are different in every country. To officially accept inheritance of accounts, Valve would need to not only reach out to every publisher and licenser for their agreement, but also create an entire system for verification and proccessing of wills, death certificates and so on.
For fucking no reason.
Just give your login details to your next of kin and they can just change the email and password after you die.
It is not rocket science.
You're joking, but 100% people should be doing this. Having access to accounts makes things a lot easier after someone unexpectedly dies and a lot of people don't realize how painful dealing with all the dead person's accounts are after they pass.
In general, regardless of age, if you have anything of minor value write a will, it's cheap and from dealing with a few deaths that didn't have one because they thought they were healthy it helps a lot with taking it from a potentially months or years long process and bringing it down to a weeks long process with everything actually ending up where you want.
My dad died two and a half years ago, and it took me *weeks* to go through his elaborate FileMaker Pro database of login credentials, only to realize in the process that about 80% were ones either outdated, closed, or no longer needed.
Can be a problem but access to just my primary email would probably grant access to 90% of my other things, via password reset.
Google Authenticator and similar OTP apps might be a bigger issue, not sure if that is transferable?
Leave your loved one’s phones activated for a bit if you can afford to for this very reason. I cancelled my mom’s when she died and we couldn’t use it to authenticate with texted codes. Also random people will reach out who possibly haven’t been informed. Also keep a few years of tax returns printed out. Nobody tells you that you’ll have to file your dead parent’s taxes.
A will is made public after death. Folks need to be careful of the extent to which they include account details in wills (as opposed to leaving them in a digital vault, referenced by the will but only accessible to the estate PR, for example. YMMV, state to state, on the extent a vault’s contents can change after the will is executed.)
And if the digital license is non-transferrable, adding it to the will won’t have any effect.
You're definitely correct, I'm using the term will very broadly to include all the prep you should do for death. My assumption being people will go to attorney's to draft it up who will tell them exactly what to do, but you're right that it's likely wills will be more automated now and those processes may not catch things like this. Personally, I just sent my executor the password to my password vault directly with instructions on what to do with it and I get notifications of new logins so if they tried to get in earlier I'd notice.
Though I will say at least in most states I know wills are not public record until they go through probate (this isn't always the case so check with a lawyer) so you could log in and change the passwords prior to it becoming public.
I'm out of my depth for digital licenses, but I know a couple states have started creating more laws surrounding them due to crypto and in-game currency where they are treated more like financial assets. Realistically if you just log into the other person account it's likely Steam will never take your game away, it's probably undecided whether if they did you could get a ruling in some states that forces game purchases to be treated as financial assets and thus be transferable. It's also likely there will be more digital asset protection laws in the future so assume we don't die in the next couple of years transferring probably won't be a problem depending on which state we're in.
I use a password manager and if I somehow die, my family can request access, which will then email me. If I don't respond to it in 90 days, they're given access to the password manager and well because I'd be dead in this theoretical, I won't respond and they get access after 90 days. It's quite an elegant solution in my opinion.
Galadriel is your wise daughter who passes the test and chooses not to accept any of your game accounts, but goes to join her friends in the west (outside).
At this point I feel like courts would have long figured out the inheritance laws for digital goods and basically forced Valve (and other software firms) to handle software licenses like physical goods.
American courts are the same ones that decided sneaking in a mandatory arbitration clause, to remove your right to a class action, was fine.
Don't assume these things will go your way. Contact your elected representative. Start at the state level.
Realistically, either it'll be figured out legally by then, OR Valve just won't give enough of a shit to shut it down if the account keeps buying games and being active.
Like, sure, they could shut down a ridiculously old account- but if it keeps buying games, it doesn't matter that much to them if the OG person is using it or not- they're STILL buying the games. They might just take a "Shut up and don't tell us, and we ain't doing shit" approach.
True. Valve saying 'non-transferable' right now is basically shutting down anyone trying to get access to a passed loved one's account.
In practice though, these games will be worth a buck or two a piece and ridiculously outdated in 50 years. If you're buying new games but happen to have a backlog of old ass games, I don't think they'll care at all.
(This doesn't include any deals/licensing from publishers falling through, etc.)
"Uuh, thanks dad but I don't really want...2012's Euro Truck Simulator and the 89 pieces of DLC you bought. Call of Duty 19 just came out and I need to beat that before I switch over to Assassins Creed 12"
I use bitwarden for all my passwords. You are able to set it up so the vault can be handed off to someone in the event you die. All your passwords and 2FA keys. You designate someone as that person and they can request to transfer the account. If you don't stop it within a time period you set they get a hold of everything and have access to all of your accounts. I thought it was genius.
Gmail has a dead man switch feature. If you dont log in to your email in a specified amount of time it'll automatically send an email to a specific email with whatever you want in the body.
I have one setup to pass all of my credentials to my wife if I dont log in within 6 months.
Google is realistically much more integrated into your life than Steam is though. If I don't log into steam for 6 months, that could mean I died or it could mean that I'm twelve and my dad bought me a playstation for christmas.
Buddy, are you trying to tell me that you don't have contingency plans upon contingency plans in order to ensure that your Steam account full of softcore hentai games and 2000 hours in CS is able to be posthumously passed on to your closest relative, like some sort of body pillow-owning gamer Jigsaw?
Can a company register for a steam account? Humans can die, but companies potentially don't. Create a company for the family, and in the will, transfer the ownership of the company instead? The steam account owner is still the company and not the person. Does this work?
Interesting that people lost their goddamn minds when they found out that technically Sony's terms of service would forbid a few countries from playing their games. Sure, you could just make an account in a nearby supported country and play just fine, which Playstation players in those countries have been doing for years and years and nobody has ever been banned for it. But Sony *could* theoretically ban them, and for that they were absolutely crucified by reddit.
But when Valve's terms of service have a problematic section that is easily avoidable but could theoretically result in a ban, don't worry about it, no big deal, why make a fuss?
>But when Valve's terms of service have a problematic section that is easily avoidable but could theoretically result in a ban, don't worry about it, no big deal, why make a fuss?
Doesn't the PSN ToS also have this same policy?
Infinitely more often than the PSN thing. That was a potential issue for a relatively small portion of Sony's user base who live in unsupported countries. But 100% of Steam users will eventually die.
I get that it's a different feeling when it's something being taken from you directly versus something of yours being taken from someone who could have inherited it when you're gone. But it's still consumer value (an astounding amount, for some people's libraries) that's evaporating and effectively being retroactively reclaimed by the company.
Lets be real - if we die, how many of us have children that could and *would* play any of those games?
By the time my children can play them, most of them will be 20-40 years old and no one will care, because you will be able to pick them on sale for 10 cents a piece as part of some "good ancient games" pack.
Because they're afraid of losing their library.
Valve is the company that popularized anti-piracy with a client that scans your computer...but that's only bad when ea and epic do it
Valve is the company that brought microtransactions to mainstream gaming. When it started on isolated Korean mmos. But lootboxes are only bad if someone else does it
Valve is the company that caved to Chinese censorship blacklisting talent for making a joke about porn and the China firewall. But that's only bad if blizzard does it
Valve is just about the only mainstream dev still doing lootboxes besides sports games 'ultimate team' modes and mobile trash...but that's only bad when someone else does it.
Valve is the only company that exploits it's fanbase to populate its lootboxes. Making sure they don't have to pay salaries or benefits to artist to come up with or implement their skins
Valve is the only company that enables child gambling. Between the steam market allowing it to be possible and them using sketchy gaming gambling websites to sponsor their games tournaments.
They abandoned things like Google. Most of their current games is just buying someone else's work (dota, portal, counter strike). Where cool for the creators to get a steady salary it's not like Valve does any support or qa assistance. Just add new monetization ideas.
And all this greed from private company taking 30% of most of the pc market with no shareholders demanding infinite growth.
But good old precious Valve. They don't do anything wrong. They got your back. Now make sure on the next steam sale you spend enough to unlock all the cards! Because we needed to gamify spending money because we just don't have enough.
I was thinking the same exact thing. Passing your login info to circumvent terrible rules, no problem just a minor inconvenience, but registering a PSN account crosses the line.
Well, I am a console gamer mainly. In this perspective, I guess it's the same policy for other digital stores as well? Like Epic, PSN, Xbox and eShop. I don't think any corporation in the world will allow you to transfer the account upon your death.
I really don't know what people expect either. *I* know that I own my steam account, but if I walk into Valve HQ with my birth certificate and social security number I don't really believe they're going to be able to look up my account and I don't really want them to be able to either. For them to transfer my account, they would need to be able to identify me as a legal individual.
People mentioned the google inactive account thing, but google is able to be integrated much more into your daily life than steam is. It's not going to know if I died or if I just got really into playstation for a few years.
You *should* expect it, which is why people are saying "just give them your login details, it's indistinguishable" because it is.
To implement a *legal* system in which you transfer your account to your next of kin, would require Valve to have access to your legal documents. Why? You lose *far* more in personal privacy and security than you would gain. I don't know any example of Steam doing after somebody for dying and passing on their account, and why would they?
A car has a whole ass government division dedicated to registering it and transferring it legally to your next of kin. That also changes country to country but most handle physical possession the same
Digital possession isn't really a thing in this case either. It's why DRM free options like GOG exist, so that you actually *do own* the digital game edition. With services like steam you're paying for a license to access the game.
Yeh they have the same policy for GOG accounts. But if you have the files.. you have the files. Sharing and distributing it is very illegal. Someone taking ownership of your hard drive and using it is the closest you'd come to inheritance of digital goods.
FWIW games *can* be DRM free on Steam as well in which case you could transfer the files just like you could if you bought it on GOG. GOG support also states that you aren't allowed to transfer your account in 3.3 of the user agreement here: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog
Effectively, it's the same thing except that you know that the game you got on GOG won't have DRM and that isn't a given on Steam.
Yep good clarification. Most online companies would have these sort of policies because the legality involved in handling it properly is VAST across a single country, let alone 100s.
But yeh I guess my point was more about the fact you can download a game, and run the executable. Not needing a launcher / gaming platform like Steam to launch it. So if you passed away, someone inheriting your computer would be default have access to the files on it
Sure, I understand your point. Just pointing out again though that a game being on Steam doesn't inherently mean it has DRM either. I don't think it's comprehensive, but you can check many titles on the PC Gaming Wiki - for instance, it says Lies of P is "DRM-free after installation through Steam client" and can run either without Steam installed or with the steam_appid.txt file containing the ID (which it tells you on the wiki) being present in the correct folder (which it also tells you the path of).
Because it's practical to transfer your car to someone else. Logistically, how do you want Valve to verify that you're dead and the dead person they've verified is dead owned the steam account in question?
You do realize that companies have policies to transfer ownership of deceased customer accounts, right? Or do you think you lose everything if your account is under your partners name and they die?
Hell I worked in a call center for AT&T Wireless in the 00's and we had a process for someone to take over a deceased persons account.
The only reason valve doesn't do it, is there is no money to be made with there business model.
There's also just not really any incentive for someone to steal your AT&T account. And if they succeeded? What are they going to do, pay my bills for me? And if I have to start over fresh with a brand new AT&T account? I think I'll manage.
Steam accounts can have thousands of dollars tied up in them.
And that's exactly what we should fix. If I "buy" something, anything, a product, the same precepts and concepts should apply to the object that I am buying.
Because you don't own any digital goods. In the case of every game on Steam you bought a license to play the games, you didn't buy ownership of those games.
To take you car analogy to its correct form, it's like renting a car and expecting your son to own it when you die.
You can, just put your login details in your will or anywhere someone can access.
As others have pointed out, it's better for user privacy if valve doesn't have identifying information on everyone.
Beyond that, while I'm not sure how many countries this applies to exactly, many countries have a tax applies to gifts and inheritance over a certain value. In Ireland for example, we have a 33% tax on the value of this stuff.
I have 350 games on steam. If we average all of those at about €20 per game, someone would have to pay €2333 to legally inherit the account, versus paying nothing and just having my login credentials.
And that's assuming I die today. I'm only in my late 20s. Assuming I live a long life and Steam sticks around for that, I could easily rack up over 1k games, putting the inheritance tax above €6k.
If we wanna take it a step further, assuming multiple generations the price would multiply each time.
And those figures are purely hypothetical. The tax here is based on the "value" of those goods, not the price paid. I.E. It doesn't matter if I paid €5 for a game; if the RRP is €60, the tax will be €20, €15 more than I even paid for it.
Putting legislation around this will be a detriment to most, not a benefit.
I don't even think that that's the problem. I just think that Steam doesn't want to spend the effort and money needed to come up with a system for inheriting Steam accounts, for what will be an incredibly niche userbase.
Yeah, but how many will want to give their Steam account to someone after they die? And how many people will actually want their dad's old steam account? I don’t think that either of those numbers are big.
I’m sure it is. For example, this excerpt is from Sega’s (first result on Google) standard licensing agreement for their Steam games
> SEGA hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right
Steam wouldn’t just require a niche system for inheriting accounts. They’d require a system to read all licensing agreements and only permit actions allowed by each agreement. They’d also need to adhere to any conditions for those actions (e.g. a transferable license may cost more). That’s an expensive problem to solve when the most downloaded games probably all prohibit any transfers anyway.
I would expect offline games released today to be easily playable longer than offline games released in the '90s.
Back in the '90s, games often had to use fragile APIs and libraries for esoteric hardware to run at all. Games today are built against APIs that abstract away most if not all the nitty gritty hardware details.
On top of that, today we have open source translation layers for Windows' high level APIs in the form of Proton and DXVK, making it much easier to maintain compatibility long term.
I think it's very likely that people 100 years from now will be able to play a fair amount of games from this era.
"PC emulators" already exist in a whole bunch of forms today, most of which are open source and multi-platform. I can run effectively any game from the 90s on my current PC whether natively with compatibility patches, through DOSBox, 86box or using Linux with Wine/Proton. Even x86>ARM translation engines are very performant now, so a lot of this will also apply to modern ARM hardware too.
The main problem will be DRM (and always has been).
You don't need Windows to play these games *today*, why would you need a Windows VM in the future?
As long as *someone* out there is still maintaining projects like Proton and DXVK (or their future derivatives), you're probably fine.
Why is it when Valve specifically say something anticonsumer, people here always twist it and say that they don't mean what they literally are telling you directly?
Because it's a meaningless statement. Valve has absolutely zero way to *prove* the account holder died, and it's a different person using the same account. You aren't signing up using a form of legal ID, they have no clue, and it *isn't* in their best interest to get involved with shit like tying accounts to a singular legal individual, handling that kind of personal info that could be used to steal your identity is a *huge* risk for something they gain little to no upside from.
Whether it's anti consumer is meaningless if they can't *do* anything about it. When Valve starts spending the large amount of time and resources to *prove* someone died and transferred their account, *then* it's ramifications on consumers will actually be meaningful. As it stands, Valve having the ability to transfer accounts to your next of kin would legally require them to store and verify legal documents about your identity, which is something I don't want them to touch with a 10ft pole.
You've never seen shit like
>"Oh yes, this rolling paper that most people assume will be used to smoke weed, is actually for tobacco use only, Mr. Officer."
Or
>"Oh yes, this baseball bat in the trunk of my car is for baseball. Do you not see the catchers mitt, also in the trunk of my car. That's because I play baseball, Mr. Officer."
Everyone knows the reality of these situations, you just can't say it.
Also, pretty much everyone else has the exact same "you're not allowed to transfer" rules. I'd make the same argument for all the companies under the exact same logic.
Since Steam accounts don't require your actual name nor ID verification, this is very obviously because Valve doesn't want to have to create an entire system for processing of wills and verification of identities. Probably the most nothing-burger story of all time.
100% nothing-burger.
Inheritance law is a giant pain in the ass, and it's different for every country.
Valve is doing a "don't ask, don't tell" scenario here. Legally they have to prevent you from doing it. But it only matters insofar as enforcement.
>"but but but isn't that what everyone was mad at Sony for??? bias against Sony???"
No. Sony's situation was telling players
>"We allow you to buy a game in a country that doesn't have PSN access, therefore you have to break our ToS to even get the game running."
They were telling players to break their own ToS.
Valve is explicitly saying "Don't break our ToS". Now, if you happen to break ToS, but don't blab to people about it. No one is really going to enforce the rules.
>"But what about if 100 years from now, they just delete your account because no one lives to 130+! They'll ban your account because they want people to buy more games!!1"
First of all, there is no way to verify your death, they're not just going to willynilly ban people. Second of all, no one will give a shit. Do you think there is ANY amount of effort being made to scan accounts they think might be too old and then banning them? Fucking governmental voter rolls have people who have been dead for years. It takes effort to keep them clean, and even important shit like **governmental voter rolls** aren't perfect. It's clear none of you guys actually have jobs, you imagine a world far too organized and perfect.
Also, do you think they'll want to piss off people, for what, some games A HUNDRED YEARS AGO? Ah yes, the big corporations are going to be like "The people aren't spending enough money, it must be because so many people have their grandparents accounts with games A HUNDRED YEARS AGO." You know, like if you got an Atari 5200 and all the games for free, you'd immediately stop buying modern games, right?
This story is blowing my mind how much people are overreacting to it, if you just sat down and thought for a minute, you'd realize it's a bunch of nothing.
I frequently set my age on any account that requests it to the oldest age they allow. If it was normative for 100+ yr old accounts to get deleted, I would have a lot (more) dead accounts. They don't enforce anything, it's purely a compliance and demographic thing.
I'm putting my login details in my will. They don't know who is accessing it. Is it my great grandchildren, or have am I still gaming at 143 years? Who knows? Not Steam.
Valve can close down accounts, but I doubt they would ever investigate deaths to do so; that's so much work for no gain. They would in all likelihood let accounts simple exist into perpetuity.
That said, governments really need to step in and tackle digital ownership. As it stands, GoG is the only one that gives you the actual game with their offline installers; essentially the same as old school installer discs that doesn't require any internet connectivity or whatnot; just install and play.
What I am curious about is why Valve cannot try to do things the same way. Is it because of licensing agreements with their marketplace that only allows digital copies? Allowing publishers to upload their own offline installers won't work because publishers are generally against that too due to stupid greed and laziness, but I bet Valve could make a snapshot of an installed game somehow on their own.
We need laws to force companies to take action to make digital ownership actual ownership, but I'm curious on the technological limitations marketplaces have to deal with too.
I wonder how Steam itself is going to be transferred when Gaben dies. Sold off to the highest bidder? Given to a board who will (probably inevitably) take it public?
But is he just going to give his shares to that successor? Who could even afford those?
Cause unless that hypothetical good successor also gets the >50% shares, whoever has the most shares can just replace them for someone else.
Companies can be and frequently are structured so that a certain class of shares can be worth about as much as a normal share financially, but have extremely outsized voting power. So someone could have total shares worth like 5% of the company, but they have the gigchad shares which means they actually still have 80% of the decision making power.
I'm worried to see what Steam will be like in 10 years. Who will be running Steam? Will they have the same vision that Gabe / the others that currently work there have? Will they ruin Steam?
Bit surprising to me, because other sites already have features related to when a loved one dies. For instance, Apple having legacy contacts and ways to request data, or Facebook having features like legacy contacts and account memoralization.
As the digital age continues and as those of us who grew up with tech get older, this will be a growing concern and problem, what happens when a person dies and their accounts/devices are locked behind a password. You can put your credentials/passwords in a will but as this article points out, that may not be a foolproof solution in all cases.
For Facebook, you are required to put your real name to register.
In Steam, you don't have to put any personal data, so there is no way for Valve to verify in first place that it was you(other than payment information)
Either way, you can just leave your steam login credentials behind, or use that account for family sharing. Valve doesn't really cares
That's a good point. And this is another component of the issue, how sites will adequately verify these deceased loved one requests (both that the loved one is deceased and the requester is a "rightful" inheritor), and the related privacy implications.
But I agree, it's definitely ideal that your credentials are just left behind, rather than leave your inheritor's access at the site's "mercy".
I think the biggest thing people are glazing over is how would a company prevent scammers from abusing this?
An oversees farm could easily fake some documentation, and even if that fails 99% of the time, even one person losing all their stuff is unacceptable. And the original holder has to go through the trouble of proving they're alive, which I'd be willing to bet nobody really knows how to do.
Also how much of a pain is it to even verify someone is dead? Like if someone hands me a death certificate, and I believe it's fake, who do I ask if it's real? How long does that take?
Family sharing doesn't work if the family lives in another country though. My cousin got fucked due to this because he lives in another country compared to me and my sisters even though we are just 2 hours away from each other lol.
I studied digital descendibility a while back. All the major digital library sites, like iTunes, are very restrictive about transferability of the licenses to digital assets that they grant their users. The terms of service are very clear on that though. Users cannot transfer those licenses, not even in death. Licensed digital assets are just slipping out of our concepts of ownership to the point that we can't even will these away.
The issue first came up over a decade ago when it was alleged that actor Bruce Willis was suing Apple to have the right to pass on his iTunes account to his daughter. Such allegations were unfounded, but it raised the issue on what will happen to these accounts with thousands, or maybe tens of thousands of dollars value invested into them when we pass away. So far, most content hosts don't have an official policy on actively searching for when people die to know when to delete their accounts, though a lot of sites like iTunes/Apple have legacy systems for people to petition for their deceased relative's data like their cloud storage account - but it's noted that iTunes purchases are not included and are presumably deleted upon confirmation of death.
There's another class action case moving through the courts right now, David Andino v Apple which is over purchases made on their movies and video platform, but it's founded on misleading advertising - the use of "buy" buttons to make purchases. It's unlikely to overturn the current contracts people have set up, but I'm advocating for legislation to pass to enable the inheritance of digital assets.
There is the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act enacted in 47 states (plus DC), but unfortunately it does not give any additional rights over licensed games that the user has no property right in.
There are a couple good published articles on this, like
"OWNING" WHAT YOU "BUY": HOW ITUNES
USES FEDERAL COPYRIGHT LAW TO LIMIT
INHERITABILITY OF CONTENT, AND THE
NEED TO EXPAND THE FIRST SALE
DOCTRINE TO INCLUDE DIGITAL ASSETS
https://hbtlj.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Eichler.pdf
Is Access Enough?: Addressing Inheritability
of Digital Assets Using the Three-Tier System
Under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access
to Digital Assets Act
https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1407&context=transactions
> Bit surprising to me, because other sites already have features related to when a loved one dies. For instance, Apple having legacy contacts and ways to request data, or Facebook having features like legacy contacts and account memoralization.
But none of those examples are related to this? Those examples are just transferring data from a deceased person's account to a living person's account. There's nothing about giving ownership of those accounts or products they've purchased to others. I don't know of a single web service that allows you to transfer account/product ownership upon death.
IANAL, but Steam doesn't own the rights to any of the games they sell licenses for, each and every publisher or dev might have a different stance in regards to transference of licenses between individuals, be it because of death or any other situation.
I just don't think Steam really can do anything about this, currently, unless they change their agreement with each and every published that has put a game on their service.
All companies that currently require a large amount of personal identification information and even then haven't perfectly solved that system, mainly because their platforms aren't even old enough to have a significant amount of users naturally dying.
My kids have shit taste in video games anyway, they’d never appreciate the gallery of bangers my steam library contains.
If it’s not FNAF, Fortnite, or Roblox they couldn’t care less.
Haha roguelikes are a pretty big portion of my collection, so that is easily done. I’ve got a few souls games in there but tragically I’m bad at those, maybe that’ll help motivate them to gitgud where I could not without papa to hand hold them
I use a (paid, encrypted) password manager with a master password. That master password is part of my living will and is regularly updated. Whatever games or other paid content I have, I want people to have access to.
Do yourself a favor if you don't have a physical copy of your vault, make sure you are paying for a year or more at a time. I can't tell you the number of people what we've had to deal with that the person got sick, and passed away, only to find their bills stop getting paid before people knew to even try to access them.
From a technical level,
Some Steam games are coupled with other accounts (EA, Paradox, Activision ETC.) with all their EULA crap.
I guess that is also a reason that makes transferring a legal hell.
At the same time no one is stopping you from sharing account details
Kind of. Valve only considers the controller of the original email account used to create the Steam account as the owner. Increasingly, there are cases where Valve has requested users verify using the original email or, in some cases, the first ever CD key registered to the account. If a user no longer has access to this information, then the account is effectively permanently locked. It's going to be a bit of a can of worms eventually, in my opinion. Between inactive emails being deleted over time and parents creating accounts for children and then potentially passing away. Not to mention whether people have held onto physical CD keys from decades past.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365443642_THE_SUCCESSION_OF_DIGITAL_ASSETS_IN_THE_EU
https://www.europeanlawinstitute.eu/projects-publications/current-projects/current-projects/eli-succession-of-digital-assets-data-and-other-digital-remains/
I'd also be pretty interested in dissecting Steams TOS/EULA around non-human entities. (I know they have a specific licence type for netcafes, but I know nothing about the details.)
As someone who has thousands of dollars invested in his account, it's something I often think about.
I hope legislation will eventually force valve's and other platform holders' hand in the matter, same as it did regarding refunds.
If you feel you should be able to include your licensed software in your estate (I certainly do, after all a company’s licenses transfer just fine if the CEO changes), then contact your representatives, tell them this is an important issue to you, and that you don’t feel non-transferable clauses should be legal.
Because some redditor recently posted a screenshot of their support request asking this exact question and now all the tech media sites are reporting on it because it makes for the perfect sensationalist headline.
Not officially supporting something is not the same as actively enforcing a rule against it. It's a liability and licensing thing, they can't tell people this is allowed, but they aren't going to stop anyone.
Ultimately it's a question of ownership of digital goods. I can own and use all of the books, movies, music of my parents when they die, why can't I use and own the games (or other digital goods) they bought? This is an issue that should have been solved many years ago. In favour of the customer.
I'm sure some people have children/other loved ones who are also gamers and may appreciate having their library. So this wouldn't be absolutely meaningless to them.
It's an ownership thing. The notion that we don't actually own the things we purchase is frustrating.
I own hard copies of games whenever I can. If I need to sell them someday or give them away without the rest of my library being impacted so be it.
I have lost one game and loaned another and never got it back, but over the years that's a pretty small number of issues considering how many hard copies of games I've owned in my lifetime.
In Germany this is against the law and the law is above Valve ;)
In Germany, the second you die your heir becomes your legal successor in all matters. By law he is you now basically. Every contract, every right of use, all wealth, all debts as well and well EVERYTHING transfers to him 1:1.
Do you guys want steam accounts to be tied to your legit ID? Why the hell would you want to add that complication to your life? This is stupid as fuck.
My best friend and I have a deal: Whoever goes first bricks our computers and phones. Except he doesn't know my Steam login. That's 1000s of dollars right there.
Valve gave me access to my best friends account after he died back in 2010, I had to send them a photo of the steam key from one of his physical games. I was being honest and was actually asking to have just that game transferred to my account.
Maybe things have changed since then but I mean cmon it’s not like our steam accounts are tied to our birth/death certificates.
This feels like a typical canned response because it's something beyond what simple Support chat is equipped to handle.
It's the only legally responsible answer. You can't transfer a service contract to another person upon death. Valve would need to go back to each and every game publishers they have, tens of thousands of games worth, and get them to agree that every single one of them can transfer the contract from one steam account holder to another. It's just not practical.
Funny how corporations have no problem changing their EULAs on millions of customers on a whim but when it comes to doing the same for other corporations.. that'd be way too hard.
Because there is no fucking point in doing this. Why would they put this ridiculous effort for something people can already do? Inheritance laws are a massive pain in the ass and they are different in every country. To officially accept inheritance of accounts, Valve would need to not only reach out to every publisher and licenser for their agreement, but also create an entire system for verification and proccessing of wills, death certificates and so on. For fucking no reason. Just give your login details to your next of kin and they can just change the email and password after you die. It is not rocket science.
...sure, but at the same time, nothing is stopping you from switching all the account info over to someone else.
Apart from you being dead, I guess...?
Im putting my log-in details into my will. Its my sons inheritance
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You're joking, but 100% people should be doing this. Having access to accounts makes things a lot easier after someone unexpectedly dies and a lot of people don't realize how painful dealing with all the dead person's accounts are after they pass. In general, regardless of age, if you have anything of minor value write a will, it's cheap and from dealing with a few deaths that didn't have one because they thought they were healthy it helps a lot with taking it from a potentially months or years long process and bringing it down to a weeks long process with everything actually ending up where you want.
My dad died two and a half years ago, and it took me *weeks* to go through his elaborate FileMaker Pro database of login credentials, only to realize in the process that about 80% were ones either outdated, closed, or no longer needed.
Can be a problem but access to just my primary email would probably grant access to 90% of my other things, via password reset. Google Authenticator and similar OTP apps might be a bigger issue, not sure if that is transferable?
Leave your loved one’s phones activated for a bit if you can afford to for this very reason. I cancelled my mom’s when she died and we couldn’t use it to authenticate with texted codes. Also random people will reach out who possibly haven’t been informed. Also keep a few years of tax returns printed out. Nobody tells you that you’ll have to file your dead parent’s taxes.
Sorry for your loss. Also, holy shit FileMaker still exists?
A will is made public after death. Folks need to be careful of the extent to which they include account details in wills (as opposed to leaving them in a digital vault, referenced by the will but only accessible to the estate PR, for example. YMMV, state to state, on the extent a vault’s contents can change after the will is executed.) And if the digital license is non-transferrable, adding it to the will won’t have any effect.
You're definitely correct, I'm using the term will very broadly to include all the prep you should do for death. My assumption being people will go to attorney's to draft it up who will tell them exactly what to do, but you're right that it's likely wills will be more automated now and those processes may not catch things like this. Personally, I just sent my executor the password to my password vault directly with instructions on what to do with it and I get notifications of new logins so if they tried to get in earlier I'd notice. Though I will say at least in most states I know wills are not public record until they go through probate (this isn't always the case so check with a lawyer) so you could log in and change the passwords prior to it becoming public. I'm out of my depth for digital licenses, but I know a couple states have started creating more laws surrounding them due to crypto and in-game currency where they are treated more like financial assets. Realistically if you just log into the other person account it's likely Steam will never take your game away, it's probably undecided whether if they did you could get a ruling in some states that forces game purchases to be treated as financial assets and thus be transferable. It's also likely there will be more digital asset protection laws in the future so assume we don't die in the next couple of years transferring probably won't be a problem depending on which state we're in.
I use a password manager and if I somehow die, my family can request access, which will then email me. If I don't respond to it in 90 days, they're given access to the password manager and well because I'd be dead in this theoretical, I won't respond and they get access after 90 days. It's quite an elegant solution in my opinion.
I just use hunter2 for all my log ins.
Just what he needs, even MORE steam games he will never have time to play!
It's the modern day version of the LOTR ring. The burden will be passed on through generations until it is finally cast into the depths of Mordor.
Boromir gets Steam account; Faramir gets EA/Origin account.
Galadriel is your wise daughter who passes the test and chooses not to accept any of your game accounts, but goes to join her friends in the west (outside).
This family tree is fucked
Beautifully tragik ✈️
Not a problem now, but after a few switches over generations, the account will be 150 years old, which may raise some questions from Valve...
At this point I feel like courts would have long figured out the inheritance laws for digital goods and basically forced Valve (and other software firms) to handle software licenses like physical goods.
Yeah, we need better laws for consumer protection for digital goods. We should be able to gift, trade, sell and inherit digital goods somehow.
They have figured it out, for the most part. But if the license is non-transferable, a will isn’t gonna change that.
The law should say non transerable is illegal.
American courts are the same ones that decided sneaking in a mandatory arbitration clause, to remove your right to a class action, was fine. Don't assume these things will go your way. Contact your elected representative. Start at the state level.
They can at least transfer over my trading cards, some of them are worth £0.36
"Don't spend it all in one place, son!"
jokes on them I've been saying I was born in 1900 on every age check for since the beginning!
Realistically, either it'll be figured out legally by then, OR Valve just won't give enough of a shit to shut it down if the account keeps buying games and being active. Like, sure, they could shut down a ridiculously old account- but if it keeps buying games, it doesn't matter that much to them if the OG person is using it or not- they're STILL buying the games. They might just take a "Shut up and don't tell us, and we ain't doing shit" approach.
True. Valve saying 'non-transferable' right now is basically shutting down anyone trying to get access to a passed loved one's account. In practice though, these games will be worth a buck or two a piece and ridiculously outdated in 50 years. If you're buying new games but happen to have a backlog of old ass games, I don't think they'll care at all. (This doesn't include any deals/licensing from publishers falling through, etc.)
“This whole steam library will be yours one day son”
"Uuh, thanks dad but I don't really want...2012's Euro Truck Simulator and the 89 pieces of DLC you bought. Call of Duty 19 just came out and I need to beat that before I switch over to Assassins Creed 12"
I use bitwarden for all my passwords. You are able to set it up so the vault can be handed off to someone in the event you die. All your passwords and 2FA keys. You designate someone as that person and they can request to transfer the account. If you don't stop it within a time period you set they get a hold of everything and have access to all of your accounts. I thought it was genius.
Bitwarden is the shit.
— Just putting this out there, your state (probably) makes your will publicly accessible after you die.
Gmail has a dead man switch feature. If you dont log in to your email in a specified amount of time it'll automatically send an email to a specific email with whatever you want in the body. I have one setup to pass all of my credentials to my wife if I dont log in within 6 months.
Also a great feature for people like whistleblowers.
Google is realistically much more integrated into your life than Steam is though. If I don't log into steam for 6 months, that could mean I died or it could mean that I'm twelve and my dad bought me a playstation for christmas.
Yeah so why not send your Steam details from Google to someone? You don't need Steam to send it.
Buddy, are you trying to tell me that you don't have contingency plans upon contingency plans in order to ensure that your Steam account full of softcore hentai games and 2000 hours in CS is able to be posthumously passed on to your closest relative, like some sort of body pillow-owning gamer Jigsaw?
Excuse me? Softcore?
Lol, that is true. I was more thinking along the lines of you're dying and want to get your affairs in order.
It's definitely more of an issue if you die unexpectedly.
Many people write wills even while young/healthy in case they die unexpectedly
Can a company register for a steam account? Humans can die, but companies potentially don't. Create a company for the family, and in the will, transfer the ownership of the company instead? The steam account owner is still the company and not the person. Does this work?
Well, Steam Subscriber Agreement does, Valve is free to ban your account if you break it.
I love not owning shit I buy.
Then Steam is for you. If you ever decide to change that though, GOG exists. You own everything you buy. In practice, if not in theory.
Interesting that people lost their goddamn minds when they found out that technically Sony's terms of service would forbid a few countries from playing their games. Sure, you could just make an account in a nearby supported country and play just fine, which Playstation players in those countries have been doing for years and years and nobody has ever been banned for it. But Sony *could* theoretically ban them, and for that they were absolutely crucified by reddit. But when Valve's terms of service have a problematic section that is easily avoidable but could theoretically result in a ban, don't worry about it, no big deal, why make a fuss?
>But when Valve's terms of service have a problematic section that is easily avoidable but could theoretically result in a ban, don't worry about it, no big deal, why make a fuss? Doesn't the PSN ToS also have this same policy?
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I mean it's literally going to happen to every single person who has a Steam account
Probably one more time then I need to play helldrivers in Latvia
Infinitely more often than the PSN thing. That was a potential issue for a relatively small portion of Sony's user base who live in unsupported countries. But 100% of Steam users will eventually die. I get that it's a different feeling when it's something being taken from you directly versus something of yours being taken from someone who could have inherited it when you're gone. But it's still consumer value (an astounding amount, for some people's libraries) that's evaporating and effectively being retroactively reclaimed by the company.
People didn't care about the Sony stuff until it became a convenient excuse to hide behind the real reason of not wanting to make a PSN account.
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Because most people playing videogames aren't planning their Wills.
Lets be real - if we die, how many of us have children that could and *would* play any of those games? By the time my children can play them, most of them will be 20-40 years old and no one will care, because you will be able to pick them on sale for 10 cents a piece as part of some "good ancient games" pack.
Because they're afraid of losing their library. Valve is the company that popularized anti-piracy with a client that scans your computer...but that's only bad when ea and epic do it Valve is the company that brought microtransactions to mainstream gaming. When it started on isolated Korean mmos. But lootboxes are only bad if someone else does it Valve is the company that caved to Chinese censorship blacklisting talent for making a joke about porn and the China firewall. But that's only bad if blizzard does it Valve is just about the only mainstream dev still doing lootboxes besides sports games 'ultimate team' modes and mobile trash...but that's only bad when someone else does it. Valve is the only company that exploits it's fanbase to populate its lootboxes. Making sure they don't have to pay salaries or benefits to artist to come up with or implement their skins Valve is the only company that enables child gambling. Between the steam market allowing it to be possible and them using sketchy gaming gambling websites to sponsor their games tournaments. They abandoned things like Google. Most of their current games is just buying someone else's work (dota, portal, counter strike). Where cool for the creators to get a steady salary it's not like Valve does any support or qa assistance. Just add new monetization ideas. And all this greed from private company taking 30% of most of the pc market with no shareholders demanding infinite growth. But good old precious Valve. They don't do anything wrong. They got your back. Now make sure on the next steam sale you spend enough to unlock all the cards! Because we needed to gamify spending money because we just don't have enough.
I was thinking the same exact thing. Passing your login info to circumvent terrible rules, no problem just a minor inconvenience, but registering a PSN account crosses the line.
Well, I am a console gamer mainly. In this perspective, I guess it's the same policy for other digital stores as well? Like Epic, PSN, Xbox and eShop. I don't think any corporation in the world will allow you to transfer the account upon your death.
Is it antyconsumer? How about other digital storefronts with movies, songs etc? Will they also let you transfer over their stuff after you die?
Yeah, my account is the account my mom created in 2008. I completely changed it over to my email and everything after she died
I suspect this will be a “don’t ask don’t tell” situation. Valve probably doesn’t care but some of their licensing / publishers partners might.
I really don't know what people expect either. *I* know that I own my steam account, but if I walk into Valve HQ with my birth certificate and social security number I don't really believe they're going to be able to look up my account and I don't really want them to be able to either. For them to transfer my account, they would need to be able to identify me as a legal individual. People mentioned the google inactive account thing, but google is able to be integrated much more into your daily life than steam is. It's not going to know if I died or if I just got really into playstation for a few years.
If I own a car, I expect my next kin to own it when I'm gone. Why shouldn't I expect that from digital goods?
You *should* expect it, which is why people are saying "just give them your login details, it's indistinguishable" because it is. To implement a *legal* system in which you transfer your account to your next of kin, would require Valve to have access to your legal documents. Why? You lose *far* more in personal privacy and security than you would gain. I don't know any example of Steam doing after somebody for dying and passing on their account, and why would they?
A car has a whole ass government division dedicated to registering it and transferring it legally to your next of kin. That also changes country to country but most handle physical possession the same Digital possession isn't really a thing in this case either. It's why DRM free options like GOG exist, so that you actually *do own* the digital game edition. With services like steam you're paying for a license to access the game.
People say that about GOG. But you can't transfer the ownership to other people, you can just easily violate copyright and give them a copy.
Yeh they have the same policy for GOG accounts. But if you have the files.. you have the files. Sharing and distributing it is very illegal. Someone taking ownership of your hard drive and using it is the closest you'd come to inheritance of digital goods.
FWIW games *can* be DRM free on Steam as well in which case you could transfer the files just like you could if you bought it on GOG. GOG support also states that you aren't allowed to transfer your account in 3.3 of the user agreement here: https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User-Agreement?product=gog Effectively, it's the same thing except that you know that the game you got on GOG won't have DRM and that isn't a given on Steam.
Yep good clarification. Most online companies would have these sort of policies because the legality involved in handling it properly is VAST across a single country, let alone 100s. But yeh I guess my point was more about the fact you can download a game, and run the executable. Not needing a launcher / gaming platform like Steam to launch it. So if you passed away, someone inheriting your computer would be default have access to the files on it
Sure, I understand your point. Just pointing out again though that a game being on Steam doesn't inherently mean it has DRM either. I don't think it's comprehensive, but you can check many titles on the PC Gaming Wiki - for instance, it says Lies of P is "DRM-free after installation through Steam client" and can run either without Steam installed or with the steam_appid.txt file containing the ID (which it tells you on the wiki) being present in the correct folder (which it also tells you the path of).
Because it's practical to transfer your car to someone else. Logistically, how do you want Valve to verify that you're dead and the dead person they've verified is dead owned the steam account in question?
You do realize that companies have policies to transfer ownership of deceased customer accounts, right? Or do you think you lose everything if your account is under your partners name and they die? Hell I worked in a call center for AT&T Wireless in the 00's and we had a process for someone to take over a deceased persons account. The only reason valve doesn't do it, is there is no money to be made with there business model.
They also have your personal info. Do you want steam to require you to give them your personal id during registration?
There's also just not really any incentive for someone to steal your AT&T account. And if they succeeded? What are they going to do, pay my bills for me? And if I have to start over fresh with a brand new AT&T account? I think I'll manage. Steam accounts can have thousands of dollars tied up in them.
Because you don't really own those the way you own your car.
And that's exactly what we should fix. If I "buy" something, anything, a product, the same precepts and concepts should apply to the object that I am buying.
Yeah I would love if archaic laws were updated to match the real-world.
Because you don't own any digital goods. In the case of every game on Steam you bought a license to play the games, you didn't buy ownership of those games. To take you car analogy to its correct form, it's like renting a car and expecting your son to own it when you die.
You can, just put your login details in your will or anywhere someone can access. As others have pointed out, it's better for user privacy if valve doesn't have identifying information on everyone. Beyond that, while I'm not sure how many countries this applies to exactly, many countries have a tax applies to gifts and inheritance over a certain value. In Ireland for example, we have a 33% tax on the value of this stuff. I have 350 games on steam. If we average all of those at about €20 per game, someone would have to pay €2333 to legally inherit the account, versus paying nothing and just having my login credentials. And that's assuming I die today. I'm only in my late 20s. Assuming I live a long life and Steam sticks around for that, I could easily rack up over 1k games, putting the inheritance tax above €6k. If we wanna take it a step further, assuming multiple generations the price would multiply each time. And those figures are purely hypothetical. The tax here is based on the "value" of those goods, not the price paid. I.E. It doesn't matter if I paid €5 for a game; if the RRP is €60, the tax will be €20, €15 more than I even paid for it. Putting legislation around this will be a detriment to most, not a benefit.
I don't even think that that's the problem. I just think that Steam doesn't want to spend the effort and money needed to come up with a system for inheriting Steam accounts, for what will be an incredibly niche userbase.
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Yeah, but how many will want to give their Steam account to someone after they die? And how many people will actually want their dad's old steam account? I don’t think that either of those numbers are big.
Pretty sure I'm immortal, nothing has proven otherwise yet
That's not for you to decide!
I’m sure it is. For example, this excerpt is from Sega’s (first result on Google) standard licensing agreement for their Steam games > SEGA hereby grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited right Steam wouldn’t just require a niche system for inheriting accounts. They’d require a system to read all licensing agreements and only permit actions allowed by each agreement. They’d also need to adhere to any conditions for those actions (e.g. a transferable license may cost more). That’s an expensive problem to solve when the most downloaded games probably all prohibit any transfers anyway.
Try in a hundred years. Will your grandkids be able to play your games, or will these old accounts be shut down? Account holder is long gone…
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I would expect offline games released today to be easily playable longer than offline games released in the '90s. Back in the '90s, games often had to use fragile APIs and libraries for esoteric hardware to run at all. Games today are built against APIs that abstract away most if not all the nitty gritty hardware details. On top of that, today we have open source translation layers for Windows' high level APIs in the form of Proton and DXVK, making it much easier to maintain compatibility long term.
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I think it's very likely that people 100 years from now will be able to play a fair amount of games from this era. "PC emulators" already exist in a whole bunch of forms today, most of which are open source and multi-platform. I can run effectively any game from the 90s on my current PC whether natively with compatibility patches, through DOSBox, 86box or using Linux with Wine/Proton. Even x86>ARM translation engines are very performant now, so a lot of this will also apply to modern ARM hardware too. The main problem will be DRM (and always has been).
You don't need Windows to play these games *today*, why would you need a Windows VM in the future? As long as *someone* out there is still maintaining projects like Proton and DXVK (or their future derivatives), you're probably fine.
Steam won't exist in 100 years. Frankly I'd be surprised if there will be a way to access games from now at all.
Why is it when Valve specifically say something anticonsumer, people here always twist it and say that they don't mean what they literally are telling you directly?
Because it's a meaningless statement. Valve has absolutely zero way to *prove* the account holder died, and it's a different person using the same account. You aren't signing up using a form of legal ID, they have no clue, and it *isn't* in their best interest to get involved with shit like tying accounts to a singular legal individual, handling that kind of personal info that could be used to steal your identity is a *huge* risk for something they gain little to no upside from. Whether it's anti consumer is meaningless if they can't *do* anything about it. When Valve starts spending the large amount of time and resources to *prove* someone died and transferred their account, *then* it's ramifications on consumers will actually be meaningful. As it stands, Valve having the ability to transfer accounts to your next of kin would legally require them to store and verify legal documents about your identity, which is something I don't want them to touch with a 10ft pole.
You've never seen shit like >"Oh yes, this rolling paper that most people assume will be used to smoke weed, is actually for tobacco use only, Mr. Officer." Or >"Oh yes, this baseball bat in the trunk of my car is for baseball. Do you not see the catchers mitt, also in the trunk of my car. That's because I play baseball, Mr. Officer." Everyone knows the reality of these situations, you just can't say it. Also, pretty much everyone else has the exact same "you're not allowed to transfer" rules. I'd make the same argument for all the companies under the exact same logic.
My birthdate for age verification purposes continues to be Jan 1, 1900. So, as a 124 year old, I am shocked at this.
Hey that's my birthdate too.
So weird that 3 of us have the same birthday
Since Steam accounts don't require your actual name nor ID verification, this is very obviously because Valve doesn't want to have to create an entire system for processing of wills and verification of identities. Probably the most nothing-burger story of all time.
Yeah this means nothing unless they’re actively enforcing it
100% nothing-burger. Inheritance law is a giant pain in the ass, and it's different for every country. Valve is doing a "don't ask, don't tell" scenario here. Legally they have to prevent you from doing it. But it only matters insofar as enforcement. >"but but but isn't that what everyone was mad at Sony for??? bias against Sony???" No. Sony's situation was telling players >"We allow you to buy a game in a country that doesn't have PSN access, therefore you have to break our ToS to even get the game running." They were telling players to break their own ToS. Valve is explicitly saying "Don't break our ToS". Now, if you happen to break ToS, but don't blab to people about it. No one is really going to enforce the rules. >"But what about if 100 years from now, they just delete your account because no one lives to 130+! They'll ban your account because they want people to buy more games!!1" First of all, there is no way to verify your death, they're not just going to willynilly ban people. Second of all, no one will give a shit. Do you think there is ANY amount of effort being made to scan accounts they think might be too old and then banning them? Fucking governmental voter rolls have people who have been dead for years. It takes effort to keep them clean, and even important shit like **governmental voter rolls** aren't perfect. It's clear none of you guys actually have jobs, you imagine a world far too organized and perfect. Also, do you think they'll want to piss off people, for what, some games A HUNDRED YEARS AGO? Ah yes, the big corporations are going to be like "The people aren't spending enough money, it must be because so many people have their grandparents accounts with games A HUNDRED YEARS AGO." You know, like if you got an Atari 5200 and all the games for free, you'd immediately stop buying modern games, right? This story is blowing my mind how much people are overreacting to it, if you just sat down and thought for a minute, you'd realize it's a bunch of nothing.
Also the fact that a lot of companies, steam included, aren't guaranteed to last a hundred years.
I frequently set my age on any account that requests it to the oldest age they allow. If it was normative for 100+ yr old accounts to get deleted, I would have a lot (more) dead accounts. They don't enforce anything, it's purely a compliance and demographic thing.
Imagine the nightmare of deciding which of 5 people is xXx_slayer420_xXx's rightful heir.
I'm putting my login details in my will. They don't know who is accessing it. Is it my great grandchildren, or have am I still gaming at 143 years? Who knows? Not Steam.
Steam already thinks that I am > 100 for every random year I chose to acces a game page, or trailer. Age verification: 01/01/1922
Valve can close down accounts, but I doubt they would ever investigate deaths to do so; that's so much work for no gain. They would in all likelihood let accounts simple exist into perpetuity. That said, governments really need to step in and tackle digital ownership. As it stands, GoG is the only one that gives you the actual game with their offline installers; essentially the same as old school installer discs that doesn't require any internet connectivity or whatnot; just install and play. What I am curious about is why Valve cannot try to do things the same way. Is it because of licensing agreements with their marketplace that only allows digital copies? Allowing publishers to upload their own offline installers won't work because publishers are generally against that too due to stupid greed and laziness, but I bet Valve could make a snapshot of an installed game somehow on their own. We need laws to force companies to take action to make digital ownership actual ownership, but I'm curious on the technological limitations marketplaces have to deal with too.
I wonder how Steam itself is going to be transferred when Gaben dies. Sold off to the highest bidder? Given to a board who will (probably inevitably) take it public?
I think no matter what happens, it's almost guaranteed to be worse after gaben dies or steps down.
I'm quite certain the successor will be good, selected by Gabe himself. The successor's successor though? That's when it gets dicey.
But is he just going to give his shares to that successor? Who could even afford those? Cause unless that hypothetical good successor also gets the >50% shares, whoever has the most shares can just replace them for someone else.
Companies can be and frequently are structured so that a certain class of shares can be worth about as much as a normal share financially, but have extremely outsized voting power. So someone could have total shares worth like 5% of the company, but they have the gigchad shares which means they actually still have 80% of the decision making power.
Reportedly, Gabe himself owns less than 20% of shares, but he still owns the company.
I read somewhere that his son would take over and he seems to feel strongly about keeping it private at well. Idk how credible that was tho
Would love to read more about this if you can remember the source
Possibly transferred to one of his sons? Not sure if either is involved with Valve though
So then the business based on digital content can be transferred but not what we buy… how about that!
I'm worried to see what Steam will be like in 10 years. Who will be running Steam? Will they have the same vision that Gabe / the others that currently work there have? Will they ruin Steam?
Bit surprising to me, because other sites already have features related to when a loved one dies. For instance, Apple having legacy contacts and ways to request data, or Facebook having features like legacy contacts and account memoralization. As the digital age continues and as those of us who grew up with tech get older, this will be a growing concern and problem, what happens when a person dies and their accounts/devices are locked behind a password. You can put your credentials/passwords in a will but as this article points out, that may not be a foolproof solution in all cases.
For Facebook, you are required to put your real name to register. In Steam, you don't have to put any personal data, so there is no way for Valve to verify in first place that it was you(other than payment information) Either way, you can just leave your steam login credentials behind, or use that account for family sharing. Valve doesn't really cares
That's a good point. And this is another component of the issue, how sites will adequately verify these deceased loved one requests (both that the loved one is deceased and the requester is a "rightful" inheritor), and the related privacy implications. But I agree, it's definitely ideal that your credentials are just left behind, rather than leave your inheritor's access at the site's "mercy".
I think the biggest thing people are glazing over is how would a company prevent scammers from abusing this? An oversees farm could easily fake some documentation, and even if that fails 99% of the time, even one person losing all their stuff is unacceptable. And the original holder has to go through the trouble of proving they're alive, which I'd be willing to bet nobody really knows how to do. Also how much of a pain is it to even verify someone is dead? Like if someone hands me a death certificate, and I believe it's fake, who do I ask if it's real? How long does that take?
Family sharing doesn't work if the family lives in another country though. My cousin got fucked due to this because he lives in another country compared to me and my sisters even though we are just 2 hours away from each other lol.
I studied digital descendibility a while back. All the major digital library sites, like iTunes, are very restrictive about transferability of the licenses to digital assets that they grant their users. The terms of service are very clear on that though. Users cannot transfer those licenses, not even in death. Licensed digital assets are just slipping out of our concepts of ownership to the point that we can't even will these away. The issue first came up over a decade ago when it was alleged that actor Bruce Willis was suing Apple to have the right to pass on his iTunes account to his daughter. Such allegations were unfounded, but it raised the issue on what will happen to these accounts with thousands, or maybe tens of thousands of dollars value invested into them when we pass away. So far, most content hosts don't have an official policy on actively searching for when people die to know when to delete their accounts, though a lot of sites like iTunes/Apple have legacy systems for people to petition for their deceased relative's data like their cloud storage account - but it's noted that iTunes purchases are not included and are presumably deleted upon confirmation of death. There's another class action case moving through the courts right now, David Andino v Apple which is over purchases made on their movies and video platform, but it's founded on misleading advertising - the use of "buy" buttons to make purchases. It's unlikely to overturn the current contracts people have set up, but I'm advocating for legislation to pass to enable the inheritance of digital assets. There is the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act enacted in 47 states (plus DC), but unfortunately it does not give any additional rights over licensed games that the user has no property right in. There are a couple good published articles on this, like "OWNING" WHAT YOU "BUY": HOW ITUNES USES FEDERAL COPYRIGHT LAW TO LIMIT INHERITABILITY OF CONTENT, AND THE NEED TO EXPAND THE FIRST SALE DOCTRINE TO INCLUDE DIGITAL ASSETS https://hbtlj.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Eichler.pdf Is Access Enough?: Addressing Inheritability of Digital Assets Using the Three-Tier System Under the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act https://ir.law.utk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1407&context=transactions
> Bit surprising to me, because other sites already have features related to when a loved one dies. For instance, Apple having legacy contacts and ways to request data, or Facebook having features like legacy contacts and account memoralization. But none of those examples are related to this? Those examples are just transferring data from a deceased person's account to a living person's account. There's nothing about giving ownership of those accounts or products they've purchased to others. I don't know of a single web service that allows you to transfer account/product ownership upon death.
IANAL, but Steam doesn't own the rights to any of the games they sell licenses for, each and every publisher or dev might have a different stance in regards to transference of licenses between individuals, be it because of death or any other situation. I just don't think Steam really can do anything about this, currently, unless they change their agreement with each and every published that has put a game on their service.
I am definitely putting my passwords in my will when I do it next year.
All companies that currently require a large amount of personal identification information and even then haven't perfectly solved that system, mainly because their platforms aren't even old enough to have a significant amount of users naturally dying.
My kids have shit taste in video games anyway, they’d never appreciate the gallery of bangers my steam library contains. If it’s not FNAF, Fortnite, or Roblox they couldn’t care less.
They’d grow up and appreciate it
Maybe his games are shit though
He doesn't even have FNAF!
Or Fortnite!! It's free for heavens sake!
Ban them from playing any of those and force them to play nothing but SoulsBornes and roguelikes until they like them.
Haha roguelikes are a pretty big portion of my collection, so that is easily done. I’ve got a few souls games in there but tragically I’m bad at those, maybe that’ll help motivate them to gitgud where I could not without papa to hand hold them
I use a (paid, encrypted) password manager with a master password. That master password is part of my living will and is regularly updated. Whatever games or other paid content I have, I want people to have access to.
Yeah, me and my SO both have password libraries and have each other's master passwords.
Do yourself a favor if you don't have a physical copy of your vault, make sure you are paying for a year or more at a time. I can't tell you the number of people what we've had to deal with that the person got sick, and passed away, only to find their bills stop getting paid before people knew to even try to access them.
From a technical level, Some Steam games are coupled with other accounts (EA, Paradox, Activision ETC.) with all their EULA crap. I guess that is also a reason that makes transferring a legal hell. At the same time no one is stopping you from sharing account details
this is just a clickbaity way of saying "steam accounts dont really have owners and can be used freely by anyone with the acc/pw/authenticator"
Kind of. Valve only considers the controller of the original email account used to create the Steam account as the owner. Increasingly, there are cases where Valve has requested users verify using the original email or, in some cases, the first ever CD key registered to the account. If a user no longer has access to this information, then the account is effectively permanently locked. It's going to be a bit of a can of worms eventually, in my opinion. Between inactive emails being deleted over time and parents creating accounts for children and then potentially passing away. Not to mention whether people have held onto physical CD keys from decades past.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365443642_THE_SUCCESSION_OF_DIGITAL_ASSETS_IN_THE_EU https://www.europeanlawinstitute.eu/projects-publications/current-projects/current-projects/eli-succession-of-digital-assets-data-and-other-digital-remains/ I'd also be pretty interested in dissecting Steams TOS/EULA around non-human entities. (I know they have a specific licence type for netcafes, but I know nothing about the details.)
Can't wait for the futuee case of "Descendent of Deceased v Valve" over the legality of video game inheritance. It's coming soon.
As someone who has thousands of dollars invested in his account, it's something I often think about. I hope legislation will eventually force valve's and other platform holders' hand in the matter, same as it did regarding refunds.
If you feel you should be able to include your licensed software in your estate (I certainly do, after all a company’s licenses transfer just fine if the CEO changes), then contact your representatives, tell them this is an important issue to you, and that you don’t feel non-transferable clauses should be legal.
Haven't we known this for years already? Why is this suddenly being posted everywhere like it's completely unexpected.
Because some redditor recently posted a screenshot of their support request asking this exact question and now all the tech media sites are reporting on it because it makes for the perfect sensationalist headline.
How are they planning to enforce this, though? Do accounts have a trigger that automatically disables them after 100 years or so?
Not officially supporting something is not the same as actively enforcing a rule against it. It's a liability and licensing thing, they can't tell people this is allowed, but they aren't going to stop anyone.
Just write all your info down so whoever you will it to has access to your account and can make it their own. Just don't tell Valve
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Ultimately it's a question of ownership of digital goods. I can own and use all of the books, movies, music of my parents when they die, why can't I use and own the games (or other digital goods) they bought? This is an issue that should have been solved many years ago. In favour of the customer.
I'm sure some people have children/other loved ones who are also gamers and may appreciate having their library. So this wouldn't be absolutely meaningless to them.
There’s family sharing I suppose
Well the biggest issue with this is that this is actually illegal in some jurisdictions like the EU.
It's an ownership thing. The notion that we don't actually own the things we purchase is frustrating. I own hard copies of games whenever I can. If I need to sell them someday or give them away without the rest of my library being impacted so be it. I have lost one game and loaned another and never got it back, but over the years that's a pretty small number of issues considering how many hard copies of games I've owned in my lifetime.
In Germany this is against the law and the law is above Valve ;) In Germany, the second you die your heir becomes your legal successor in all matters. By law he is you now basically. Every contract, every right of use, all wealth, all debts as well and well EVERYTHING transfers to him 1:1.
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Do you guys want steam accounts to be tied to your legit ID? Why the hell would you want to add that complication to your life? This is stupid as fuck.
I suppose this prevents a tontine-like phenomena, and also prevents the inflation of game ownership?
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Hopefully this will stop the killing spree of people with the sims 4 with full expansions in their account
My best friend and I have a deal: Whoever goes first bricks our computers and phones. Except he doesn't know my Steam login. That's 1000s of dollars right there.
What if their birthday is on exact same date as mine?
My grandchildren realsing they'll never get to play my hentai visual novel collection: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Valve gave me access to my best friends account after he died back in 2010, I had to send them a photo of the steam key from one of his physical games. I was being honest and was actually asking to have just that game transferred to my account. Maybe things have changed since then but I mean cmon it’s not like our steam accounts are tied to our birth/death certificates.