Checkmate Valve

This screenshot is from 100 years in the future.

If you look very closely, you can see its Photoshop!

And to how many already played games you return to bcs not enough energy to start a brand new game (especially with rich/complex lore).

Yeah.

I look forward to the day when I pass my screen name on to my son...

Not true as I've often been born on January 1st in the early 1900's.

Assuming valve still exists at that point.

but by that point, whoever the inheritors of the account were have probably been paying money and adding new games to it for decades. why would valve destroy their relationship with that customer just because they might still technically have access to some hundred year old games that either don't even run on modern systems, or might even be public domain by that point?

Nah, because while it would be very easy to implement something like that, it would require specifically doing it. Programmers have 3 reasons for writing code

It's cool. It's necessary. I was told to do it in exchange for money

(And the secret fourth reason, it just kinda happened. I was building this related thing and I realized it'd be stupid easy to toss it in...I was in a fugue state and I have no idea what I wrote, but it's some of my best code ever)

Devs don't generally care about this kind of thing, and most of the time neither do the business folk. This kind of unnecessary crackdown only comes up when consultants like McKinney, who I've recently learned are the reason everything sucks

By that time, all the games you bought now will be public domain.

But will they care if the account continues buying games? Is it easier to let it slide, or force someone to make a new account, there by pissing them off?

I dunno if it's "family sharing" or some other thing, but I can play games from my sister's library through some means that I set up a couple of years ago.

I don't know how it works (I'm not the tech one in the relationship), but I've been using family sharing for years with my partner

I was under the impression that if someone is playing a game from your library you can't access it unless you boot them out (or you put steam in offline mode, meaning no updates or multiplayer for the duration). Is that no longer true?

How is that abuse? Imagine how many viruses you'll be avoiding by legitimately sharing games with your friends.

I started elden ring from a family share recently, friend hasn't gotten the dlc so I'm just getting to experience the main game for free before deciding if I actually want to spend 80 on the game and dlc

I would trust steam wouldn't do it but epic and Microsoft will

Only if they catch me ;)

Good luck to anyone trying to enforce that lol

Sssssshhhhhh steam doesn't need to know

Bignutsforchicks9000

I think this is more of a defence against scammers honestly, with a convincing enough scam you could make valve belive an account holder was dead and you're a family member wanting to transfer their account to yours.

Hell, I saw my dead friend's account message me in Russian, contacted support about it, and all they could do was remove the hacker's access, not even lock or delete that account.

And how could they? Unless you have your full name, address, and other identifying information somewhere on your account (strongly ill-advised, obviously) Valve can't cross check it with a death certificate and take action, for all they know you could be cooperating with the hacker or submitting fake information to "prank" your friend by getting their account removed.

Allowing account transfers would open a whole new can of worms.

Just write down the password and login if you know you're going to go. I don't think Valve under Gabe would have issues with that. Though I do worry for its future