After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo

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polonyc2

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With Valve's Steam gaming platform approaching the US drinking age this year, more and more aging PC gamers may be considering what will happen to their vast digital game libraries after they die...unfortunately, legally, your collection of hundreds of backlogged games will likely pass into the ether along with you someday

The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament: "Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable" the response reads. "Steam Support can't provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will"

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/after-you-die-your-steam-games-will-be-stuck-in-legal-limbo/
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Just write down your username and password on a piece of paper. How is Valve ever going to know the difference?
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I imagine they don't care about that. This probably isn't a "You can't do this, it's against the rules and we'll be mad!" kind of thing. More it is a "This is shit we do not want to deal with, so the official answer is no." The probate system is a pain in the ass, I'm sure they don't want to deal with that.
 
Sycraft said:
I imagine they don't care about that. This probably isn't a "You can't do this, it's against the rules and we'll be mad!" kind of thing. More it is a "This is shit we do not want to deal with, so the official answer is no." The probate system is a pain in the ass, I'm sure they don't want to deal with that.
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Which is kind of dumb. If Facebook can do it to turn profiles into memorial pages I would think Valve could handle it, especially if they made it more automated somehow. I know it's 3 billion monthly users vs 120 million, but still.
 
"money talks & bullshit walks"

Until they have something to gain (financially) from anything like this, they aint gonna do squat about it....

I'd bet that if someone offered them a small fee to cover the cost of the transfers, they would have done it YESTERDAY !

If financial institutions (mortgages, credit cards, car loans etc) can make this happen & comply with wills and such, then it should not be that big of deal for a much simpler online gamr account.....it's not like we're asking them to re-invent the wheel for cryin out loud....

I'm soooo glad I'm not a gamr & won't ever have to deal with silly sh^t like this :D

Note to future self: Valve/Steam, you suk !
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Just write down your username and password on a piece of paper. How is Valve ever going to know the difference?
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that would work, but we can imagine child/grand child that would care about game would already have a steam account and now you are juggling with 2 of them (maybe it is easy to install all a library than pass to your own.... I never tried, maybe more on a issue for itunes and more streaming has you go type of account)

That became something when Bruce Willis wondered if it could give his over $100,000 itunes collection to a kid after his deaths more than a decade ago, not sure how it ended up:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102431, seem like licensed data is not available to be transfered-accessed...

dogDAbone said:
Until they have something to gain (financially) from anything like this, they aint gonna do squat about it....
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Steam make deals with video game publisher to sell their games, being non-transferable for free could have been a general condition, going back to everyone to negotiate new term could be quite the ordeal.

That something that could be easier to do in a, for all game has of January 1 of next year they will be transferable on death...
 
vegeta535 said:
This is the digital world you people are asking for.
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Historically transferring 65 years old physical game would have been harder with a lesser success rate than writing down an user name and password in your will, game on 50 years+ floppy disk ? Did parents collection of VHS-8 tracks-small tape have been used a lot by their descendant ?

CD-DVD maybe they work, but the going to get a usb 7 external drive for them, will see how it play out but in that regard, this model could be much better than what we had before.
 
I won't be playing any games when I'm dead so I don't care if I'm reincarnated then then maybe that would be worth it.
 
Lol this is so stupid. This is gaming's equivalent of SJWs crying for justice and change on something that really doesn't matter at all, and that anyone can easily take care of themselves if they actually do care about it.

If you really want someone to inherit your steam library it's simple.
Give them your username and password, or give them the email you used for your account and they can recover it. Congrats, you now "inherited" a Steam library.
Valve DGAF. They aren't scanning obituaries and deleting steam accounts, they don't have your social security number, they don't even know your real name. Do not tell Valve, just use the account, it is yours now.

Making a stink about something so trivial is just stupid and if anything comes of it we'll probably be worse off.
All those countries where it's "illegal to prevent inheritance of an account" are going charge you inheritance tax you on the steam library. Have fun when the tax collectors come for thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars because they decide to evaulate the account worth based on what daddy spent over 50 years. Have fun entering your social security number (or your countries equivalent) just to buy a game, etc.
 
kydsid said:
They might figure it out about the time of your 120th or so birthday, IF they bother to track user ages that is, which you never know. LOL
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There are two things I'd be concerned about as a more immediate issue than that far ahead: GDPR or similar impacts on user accounts and also who will keep a game functional once a company has abandoned upkeep of it for newer operating systems/etc.

Right now various companies are applying GDPR policies to customers even countries outside the EU, where after just 1-2 years of account inactivity they'll delete your entire account and content. While I appreciate some aspects GDPR has brought on a global level, privacy options wise and for allowing leverage over companies that are doing shit things, I still think that the interpretation of wiping an account after inactivity will just accelerate the issue of ephemeral digital libraries.

Then with the issue of playability, there have already been various compatibility issues and community workarounds just going from marginally older Windows to modern Windows, apart from any defunct additional DRM layers. I'm skeptical the longevity of libraries, apart from any licensing issues that will cause a game to be delisted over time.

With 3D title install sizes being in the 40-100GB range now and with few physical PC game releases most aren't bothering to hoard collections of games to disk (esp. given the overall shift to more expensive per TB SSDs for gaming systems), so such users are entirely dependant on these games continue to function, else they'll have to find (and trust) some cracked copy.
 
kydsid said:
They might figure it out about the time of your 120th or so birthday, IF they bother to track user ages that is, which you never know. LOL
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This was my only thought. Born in the late 1900s but its now 2100 and his account is still active? Highly suspect.
I've considered migrating my account to my kiddo early and making a new one for myself.
 
Okatis said:
also who will keep a game functional once a company has abandoned upkeep of it for newer operating systems/etc.
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Over the amount of time being talked about, if we are lucky it will be with the equivalent of DosBox now (which has not a bad success rate for popular title)

Once you need directx-gpu access stuff (npu) it can get more complicated, but maybe by then playing in translation mode will be strong enough to play today title, for game with strong anti-cheat that will almost certainly be an issue but either they are still popular and maintained or you do not have a community to play with anyway.

THe issue with win95-98 game in today hardware show that it will not necessarily be easy, but has strong the hardware get versus whats needed to play native, the more we can get away with emulation-vm-software mode.

Okatis said:
With 3D title install sizes being in the 40-100GB range now and with few physical PC game releases most aren't bothering to hoard collections of games to disk (esp. given the overall shift to more expensive per TB SSDs for gaming systems), so such users are entirely dependant on these games continue to function, else they'll have to find (and trust) some cracked copy.
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On that aspect I would imagine that way more than certain other era.

We are getting close to terabyte for $13-15 and because of SSD being small and expensive (and no medium gain in a long time) game stalled in size a lot, Assasin creed biggest title was the 2014 one I think, you can put 50 giant AAA GOG game installer on a $75 harddrive. When game were 700mb (or many CDs) and 4GB harddrive were expensive, it was a different ballpark.

In the 90s, you were always deinstalling-installing your game and not keeping copy of installer on your harddrive. I think people are yes getting quite dependant for the game cloud service to function, but more because they assume now that it will, not that it would be expensive to keep a local steam copy, probably cheaper than ever in that regard.
 
hity645 said:
This was my only thought. Born in the late 1900s but its now 2100 and his account is still active? Highly suspect.
I've considered migrating my account to my kiddo early and making a new one for myself.
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Valve must know and not care...or at the very least they are not going to enforce this...Steam started up in 2003 so it's still in its infancy...in 2113 accounts will be aged out...what are they going to do?...it can't be transferred via a 'last will and testament' but unofficially can be transferred via just giving someone else your user account information
 
polonyc2 said:
what are they going to do?...it can't be transferred via a 'last will and testamen
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Maybe a subset could (via publisher that accepted for them to do so for game so old they are now "abandonware" and free of copyright...), no need for any will going on just a feature of the give all my can be transferred content to account X and the people that got it as a gift got the password and do it themselve.
 
LukeTbk said:
We are getting close to terabyte for $13-15 and because of SSD being small and expensive (and no medium gain in a long time) game stalled in size a lot, Assasin creed biggest title was the 2014 one I think, you can put 50 giant AAA GOG game installer on a $75 harddrive. When game were 700mb (or many CDs) and 4GB harddrive were expensive, it was a different ballpark.
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Just checked AC Unity's (is that the one being referred to?) storage requirements which is 50GB vs AC Valhalla which is 160GB. Tbh, I haven't seen a trend of AAA game size stalling but rather growing each year, from increasing expectations of graphical fidelity (which also helps sell such titles).

I agree that it's partly a cultural thing with the shift in storing games vs relying on availability, where mostly those with an eye more toward preservation and concerns about permanence will keep copies while increasingly consumers have become used to subscriptions and less tangible control over their purchases.
 
Okatis said:
Just checked AC Unity's (is that the one being referred to?) storage requirements which is 50GB vs AC Valhalla which is 160GB
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Asset compression technology gained ground over time, install size versus installer size can differ a bit, Ac Valhalla (launch version) installed was from 63GB (Xbox one) to 77GB (PC-PS5) with the updated version, but the size of the installer was quite similar to Odyssey and Unity, apparently.

Take it this way Final Fantasy 6 Rom size was around 3-5 floppy disk, 4-5 MB, Final Fantasy 7 took 5 CD rom from memory (was probably 1400mb -2000mb), CD made game size explode and we went from 80 MB hard drive in the early 90s to 80,000 MB hardrive in the early 00's to 80-120GB in the early 00s to 1000 GBs in 2010, the size of the medium to transport-sale games exploded by 500 and harddrive space has well in a short time.

In comparison, we were buying 1 TB computer in 2010, people in 2024 buy playstation, xbox and laptop with 1 TB sometime less still.

1) using engine instead of pre-render video, video compression when they are used
2) Asset compression getting better
3) gaming Harddrive stagnation (Ps4 game with 500GB in 2013, ps5 with 1tb now, that quite different than 20GB-60GB PS3->500GB ps4) and medium to transport them not evolving like in the past.

we were used to game install and hard drive size to jump by a factor of 100x in not that long of windows, maybe we multiplied by 3 in 12 years ? If that, it could be the cheapest moment ever to stockpile game install files, on rusting harddrive.
 
A friend died over 5 years ago now. His daughter uses his account to this day. This is in the US. I have no idea what Valve's stance or the individual game's dev/pub think about this.
If they know about it at all, is it worth the bad press to crap on an heir playing what is more than likely older games? I mean, if I die today, sure there are several games in my account that launched in the last year, but most of my games are a decade from release or more. Would anyone really care if my grandkids picked up my account and started playing CS or the Orange box games?

The idea of setting up a trust just for my Steam account seems a bit much.
 
LukeTbk said:
that would work, but we can imagine child/grand child that would care about game would already have a steam account and now you are juggling with 2 of them (maybe it is easy to install all a library than pass to your own.... I never tried, maybe more on a issue for itunes and more streaming has you go type of account)
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My 13 year old has basically taken over my steam account at this point. When he was younger and wanted to buy garbage games on steam, they went into my account, because why setup a steam account for a 10 year old... and now it's clear, I haven't bought much recently, so all the fresh games are his and steam doesn't let you transfer stuff, so easiest to just give him the account. Maybe at some point, I'll have to rebuy some stuff on my alt account (that's now my main), when he starts actively managing the account.
 
Gorankar said:
is it worth the bad press to crap on an heir playing what is more than likely older games? I mean, if I die today, sure there are several games in my account that launched in the last year, but most of my games are a decade from release or more. Would anyone really care if my grandkids picked up my account and started playing CS or the Orange box games?
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it won't be just to play older games...the new account holder can just buy new games and add it to the account
 
Gorankar said:
This is in the US. I have no idea what Valve's stance or the individual game's dev/pub think about this.
If they know about it at all, is it worth the bad press to crap on an heir playing what is more than likely older games?
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My guess, would be, no one mind that actual scenario and would never take active step (with a human involved against it).

Having a system to take care of it officially is a pain (and getting it in writing with the publisher) that verify it is a legit gift down (like the complicated process of giving a used car to your family member and that dealt differently tax wise or what not here), just let people share down password....
Having an process to easily transfer account without the said painful process above would open the door to people trading account with crypto and many publisher would not like that, maybe steam themselve.

Usually content owner have a list of condition when they accept for a platform to distribute it, the level of encryption, DRM, hdmi encryption and I could imagine if they are on the hook refund policy-resell policy-trade-gift would be. If we look at the leaked contract between sony and Itunes for example, if Itunes change their movie encryption or any relevant security measure down, they need Sony signed on a contract approval to do so. And there is a clear: Movies may be used solely for the Customer’s Personal Use
 
polonyc2 said:
it won't be just to play older games...the new account holder can just buy new games and add it to the account
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Then I really doubt anyone would care if it's the original account owner or an heir. A paying customer is a paying customer.
 
LukeTbk said:
Historically transferring 65 years old physical game would have been harder with a lesser success rate than writing down an user name and password in your will, game on 50 years+ floppy disk ? Did parents collection of VHS-8 tracks-small tape have been used a lot by their descendant ?

CD-DVD maybe they work, but the going to get a usb 7 external drive for them, will see how it play out but in that regard, this model could be much better than what we had before.
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Those physical games will still hold actual value. Your steam account is worthless.
 
vegeta535 said:
Those physical games will still hold actual value. Your steam account is worthless.
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Has collectible that could be true (hard to predict, maybe the only buyer for old game will be people that were young when they launched-were popular and will not old up among people that were not born or maybe not it will be like civil war memorabilia and coins and will pastime), if they are kept in really good condition with the box and everything.
 
Sycraft said:
I imagine they don't care about that. This probably isn't a "You can't do this, it's against the rules and we'll be mad!" kind of thing. More it is a "This is shit we do not want to deal with, so the official answer is no." The probate system is a pain in the ass, I'm sure they don't want to deal with that.
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Yep. Valve probably isn't interested in creating what would mostly just become a ToS abuse vector for scammers and an influx of bogus wills trying to hijack Steam accounts to resell them, nevermind creating additional work for themselves trying to police the authenticity of legal documents. I'm sure they might make an exception for the rare legit case after someone has proven everything to a judge first.

The source Ars article reads like a manufactured-concern piece, like one of those "man bites dog" edge case articles that's fun to read but doesn't really impact most people.
 
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