After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo
After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo
Saw a article on a large number of gamers being over 55 and then I saw this which I believe needs to be addressed in our current laws.
Remember kids; if buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.
Agreed. Same for every digital product we buy, games, movies, music, pictures, etc. We paid for it, we own it, we can pass our along.
It's technically file sharing, and sharing is caring.
I'm the guy who came up with this quote and it still gives me a little thrill every time I see someone else say it!
My sister has my account info. So when I die, she can do whatever.
You buy the license mate. Isn't it how it always is? Isn't it why we call the good ol days license keys? Because we buy those license keys. The problem is not the word "buy" or "purchase" being used. The problem is DRM as its true meaning. Digital Rights Management. How would you enforce a sale of offline single player license keys? When you don't have the keys anymore, you should also uninstall the game. But would you? Hence the need for online DRM. The problem now is that companies don't like it when you resell those licenses and since it is their IP and their right, they can enforce that too with online drm. I am not saying the current state of affairs is good by any means. I am stating how we all came here in the first place. We do need a law for more consumer protection regarding the sale of digital goods. Or fuck, any law regarding digital things. Our law hasn't caught up much with the advancement of technology
its* use.
I don't see the issue. The account is tied to an email address with which you can reset the password. With a death certificate you can transfer access to the email account to a different person, reset the login password, change the email address it's tied to and change the banking details.
So the Steam account can be transferred, they just don't do it for you.
https://support.google.com/accounts/troubleshooter/6357590?hl=en
From what I know, you cannot access or transfer a email account on death, at most you can close it.
So again, there is a need for legal ways to transfer our digital goods in my opinion because unless you have a will, which so many people don't have set up, with passwords for all of your accounts, which you'd better be updating on every password change, if you die suddenly before you can transfer your account in a orderly fashion, you can be hosed with passing on digital goods
If you can't with this one particular email provider, you can just use a different one, or even your own domain.
Google has a feature that lets you automatically send your account login info to an address of your choosing if you haven't logged in in over, say, three months. If I croak unexpectedly, my family will eventually receive access to my email and will be able to subsequently access anything that email was tied to.
Not a huge fan of Google in 2024 but this feature is worthwhile.
Or you can just give your password to your loved ones. Valve can’t stop you from doing that. They aren’t god, they make their billions off loot boxes.
They need to make up their minds. Yes or no question, when I buy something on steam, do I own it or am I leasing it? I've been buying there under the presumption it was the digital equivalence of buying CD's like I used to. That was how it was sold to me, and the law is very clear about transferring possessions after ones passing.
I've been buying there under the presumption it was the digital equivalence of buying CD's like I used to.
Why presume when you can read the T&C?
That was how it was sold to me
I don't believe it was.
And I'm not here to support Steam/Valve. I much prefer GOG, because when you buy a game on GOG, the files are literally yours to use. Buy a copy, download it to your hard drive, copy it to a USB drive, plug the USB drive into a machine that's never been connected to the internet (let alone your GOG account) and boot up both copies at once.
YMMV when it comes to online multiplayer over severs. I'm a retro gamer, so that's not my area of expertise, lol. I think for those, you would need separate accounts to play online together.
A service cannot define stipulations that go against civil law common law, even with when agreeing to "T&C". When you buy something in a store and then later they go "nono you didn't actually buy it", that is selling under false pretense.
I don't believe it was.
What are you talking about ofcourse it was, and GOG launched 5-6 years later then Steam. When Steam was launched it was marketed as your library of games made as convenient as possible. You lock yourself into our platform and we'll provide you with many tools like cloudsaves, chat system and online services like Xfire all-in-one, and even when you lose your CD's, the game is tied to your account, not a physical CD.
Pay closer attention to purchasing items on steam, they purposefully avoid using words like 'own' or even 'buy'. You 'Add to Cart' and 'Purchase' and when you buy something, it says: "Any digital items in this order are now registered to your account on Steam. To access your items, simply visit your library in Steam whenever you're ready." I felt like I owned it when I paid money for it and that's kind of the trick, but reading the wording definitely changes things.
On Steam's end, it was already decided long ago. I'd say a lot of it is contractual and Steam likely couldn't change it if they wanted to, but then they were also involved in drawing up the contracts.
Excuse the pun but I'm not buying it lmao, half of my Steam library I bought in a physical store and had no fine print indicating I wasn't actually "buying" the game. Steam might try a rugpull people but you cannot go against civil law common law, they might force you into a contract but at least where I live they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Edit: My law courses were not in English
We had my Dad’s password info and after he passed, his Steam acct pretty much passed over to my brother, since he was the one always using my Dad’s account anyways. We also have family sharing up, so we all still get to share from most of his games anyways.
I do wonder what they’ll do after an acct is 50-100+ years old and it’s still being used. Will they at some point start tying it to your SS# or find some other way to tie it to specific people?
Yeah... I'm not as optimistic as you are about the lifespan of Steam and how long there will be people using this platform, let alone how long there will be people period. I don't see this being an issue.
Edited to add: sorry for your loss btw. I'm glad you're able to share his games, I hope that is a positive thing for you.
I mean, Nintendo's been around for over 100 years. As long as GabeN's successor isn't gonna sell the platform to any shit company for a bajillion dollars I don't see why valve can't make it at least one more generation.
My best friend died a few years ago. He was a dumbass with his passwords and I did tech support for him a few times, so I knew his password. It's nice to be able to share his games with friends (many of whom already had library sharing set up, but it needs to be redone if a sharee switches devices, I think). I was talking about this issue to some friends recently, because we were lucky to have my friend's details. How grim it is to be on the forefront of this question, eh?
I’m sick of this stupid fucking talking point. Steam doesn’t own your email address or credentials. They don’t verify ownership or tie someone’s identity to an account. You can just give your fucking credentials away and they won’t know or care. Shut the fuck up about this already.
not only that, but this is also mostly about copyright. steam can't force publishers to just transfer the licenses. this shit must be resolved in law, not on steam's whims.
Well glad you have your death date all planned, you'll never unexpectedly die before that date, have your will and trust set, are having your will and trust legally updated ever time you update your password for all your digital media accounts.
Not all of us do and in lieu of relying on individuals to have this shit set up and hope nothing goes wrong I'll continue to advocate that we need a legal avenue to ensure legally purchased digital goods are able to be passed on after death and no I'm not going to shut the fuck up about but you're more than free to continue to not give fuck.
You only need to pass access to your password manager, which already includes everything. Since you should already have a physical recovery information card printed for your password manager in a drawer somewhere, it would be found anyway.
You really think bitching about it on social media is advocating? What are you actually doing to raise awareness? Ah, I see you just downvoted and didn’t reply. That’s what I thought.
Makes you wonder, after 100 years they flag the account for review. It would also be impressive if this service still existed after that long as well. Who knows!
Honestly always online DRM is illegal. You cannot provide a good a service. All these companies who are planting these time bombs into software and devices need to be handed a big FU and realize that they are creating the piracy they claim to protect against.
I like Valve, but I don't like them enough to believe they won't close my account on a whim for no reason one day.
I think everyone is eager to have Steam let them "pass on" their games...but if that happens, there'll probably be a lot of...
It'd be nice if there were an easy solution, but I don't think there is one.
I'm not even defending Steam here. If you want DRM-free games, buy from GOG. Steam has more games, and sometimes lower prices...but you're not buying a game that you own. It was never a secret. Hence why they marketed it as a Steam Library. You can use whatever you want in the library, but you own none of it.
A lot of the problems are already solved by probate/estate/etc.
Like, if you had property at a bank, you'd need a death certificate which you'll have requested tons of if someone you loved died... along with potentially some sort of proof that you were the rightful heir (Worst case, you'd establish this through probate, likely going to end up being a simple document). This would be more overhead for steam, but usually not complicated documents once everything is settled. As for splitting up the account, your steam account would probably be classified as a singular item and any attempts to break it up in a will would likely just end up being void.
Agreed on both counts
OTOH, Steam is an international company, and there are different standards and such for death certificates across the world. So Steam would have to have some expertise in verifying death certificates from any country they operate in.
Increasing overhead and liability when they'd probably earn very little good will is usually not the best business strategy. I don't think they'd do it unless they were legally compelled to.
Write your steam username and password down somewhere in plain text (and maybe your email auth too since steam seems to like email 2fa garbage), and then someone will find it after you die and can use your account.
I agree with you, especially when viewed with an eye towards practicality. It opens so many cans of worms that it's probably not worth Valve investing any resources.
They're just not going to move your library of games to another account's library. I highly doubt that, even though it does technically go against the TOS, giving your credentials to someone else is going to get that account banned.
They won't transfer it; but you still can. And with good reason, too. If they allowed it, people would try and use it to steal accounts.
I mean, as long as you don't give Steam any personally identifying info and make sure that your beneficiary has your password and 2FA, I don't really see how that's enforceable.
It's still not unreasonable in my opinion to have a legal route to pass our digital property down. Here we're talking about steam, a relatively good company, imagine what EA or Ubisoft would do without legal protections.
I think everybody is missing a crucial point here: what happens with a 200-year-old steam account?
So don't be stupid. Got it