Valve confirms your Steam account cannot be transferred to anyone after you die
Valve confirms your Steam account cannot be transferred to anyone after you die
The confirmation came from the Steam support staff earlier this month when Resetera forum user delete12345 asked Steam support if he can put his Steam library in...
If you cannot pass on your ownership rights to your purchased games to your children, then you cannot pass on your copyright either, I guess?
I mean... They're saying they can't transfer games from one account to another right? But you could just put your account details in your will and anyone could login to your steam account and access your games, right?
Sure would be nice if they had the feature. But I'm not sure it's such a big deal.
85This is explicitly against their TOS. Whether or not you'll be found out is a whole other matter
48I can't be arsed to read the ToS again, but is it also forbidden to just share an account between several people?
My brother and I opened up that account six years ago and except for the times I forgot to turn my internet off to not be kicked out of games while my brother plays one we never had problems. It would be really shitty if we got into trouble for this because the account is valued somewhere between 1.500 and 4.300€ and is the most expensive thing I own except for my PC.
7This is explicitly against their TOS. Whether or not you’ll be found out is a whole other matter
Also whether or not those TOS are legally enforceable in every single country Valve operates in.
6
Honestly it's bullshit, thousands of dollars of games have died with my brother-in-law, and it's just another reason to pirate everything digital you can.
Don't die without a will and don't die without telling family important details/passwords.
60Even for unexpected/accidental deaths, this has an easy fix: Put my bitwarden master password on my will.
9You're assuming people are organised.
6And your 2FA seed phrases
2
IANAL, but I feel like if the heirs to an estate cared enough about the deceased's Steam account enough to get the court involved, Steam wouldn't have a leg to stand on. But that's probably what it would take to get them to do the right thing.
42If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
(keep a copy of mr. goldburg)
37That's ridiculous. You should be free to give away, sell, or trade digital games just like you can with physical copies.
33Agree, even more so with the private cloud data. If your loved one dies and you want to visit multiplayer you created together in open world builders it would be shitty to take that away from them. Eg: Father and son played Minecraft together on LAN server or whatever (If that even is a thing)
1
How do they know that I'm dead? Have they attended my funeral?
31No reason to have kids if they can't carry on my legacy.
15I mean you'd hope people would have kids to play games with them, which means they would probably build their own steam library hopefully before you die and would be willing to hand it off. While you're alive you can use the family share setting so they can play your games and leave them the credentials to your account in your family's password manager that they inherit
0
You typically don't get "ownership rights" when you purchase a game on Steam. You'll typically be purchasing a licence to play the game, which could be taken away at any point. Some Steam games don't include DRM after installation, and you'll truly own those games after downloading them. (you can search for a game here, and find the DRM used) I'd recommend avoiding purchasing games on Steam whenever DRM is included if you want to own the game you'd buy, there are a lot of online stores that sell games without DRM.
10Can same game be with DRM on steam and without DRM on other platform.
7Yes. In those cases the steam DRM is usually for achievements, friend joining, and checking that it was run via steam.
There are plenty of "steam emulators" or even patchers that remove the steam DRM.
So as long as you have the files applications such as SteamEMU and Steamless are godsends in ensuring that when you "buy" a game you will still be able to play it.
4
You typically don’t get “ownership rights” when you purchase a game on Steam. You’ll typically be purchasing a licence to play the game, which could be taken away at any point.
That is certainly what Valve thinks and writes in their TOS but if their store has a big button that says "BUY HALO" then courts may very well decide that you actually bought Halo.
And many countries have a strict legal definition of what buying means that cannot be overruled by some company's TOS.3
That's okay, I plan to be reincarnated.
10Valve needs to be forced to allow customers to sell and trade their digital games
9Fine just create a digital corporation of your identity and assign rights to that instead. I hear they have the same rights as people.
6It is worth noting here that Valve recently announced a new feature that allows Steam users to share games with their friends and family. Dubbed "Steam Families,"
New? That exists for years Oo. Or what am I missing here?
6Previously, if you shared your library and someone else was playing any game, they would get ejected from said game and be unable to play any other game, as soon as you started to play any game whatsoever.
This made it more or less useless.
Now they changed it to where you can only play the same game as many times as your family collectively owns it. So, if your family member plays a game you only have a single copy of, they can keep doing so, until you start that exact game. You may still need to activate the client beta for this, but it'll be active for everyone eventually. (Don't know if it is yet, as I'm using the beta)
6They made it useable (see the wan show on it a cople weeks ago)
5
What's a steam account and why would i want one?
-2It's the biggest video game marketplace/launcher/DRM makers for PC. If you play video games on PC most games you buy would probably have to be through steam. Their parent company, Valve, is the only multi-billion dollar company I like because so far they have stayed pro-consumer.
4