Valve confirms your Steam account cannot be transferred to anyone after you die

winjer said:

So if I die, my family can inherit everything I own, except for my digital games. That I bought and paid.
Digital games are turning out to be quite the scam.

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Don't you remember you only renting games on steam, not own then?
Go buy on gog if you want to own anything .

From others comments elsewhere, probably won't stand up in the EU.

But is this even a thing? I imagine people sell steam accounts, just need to change linked email address I suppose.

My browser remembers nothing, so need 2FA to log into steam.
My son already knows my steam password

Probably best to have a family email account for smooth transition.

My son doesn't know my email password, but he could access my phone's password

When you are 150 years old, say not technically dead, as in cryogenic suspension. Plus you can throw it back at them, show me the death certificate , that some big corps make people show to access things

Steam AI will know it's not you, it's coming

The greater concern, is will Steam be here in 30 years

umeng2002 said:

How will they know if you die?

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Exactly. A few people already know where to find all of my login information and passwords. Just in case.
One of them, will be me from then on.

scavengerspc said:

Exactly. A few people already know where to find all of my login information and passwords. Just in case.
One of them, will be me from then on.

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So you a like a time lord. what iteration Scavengerspc are you the second or sixth ?

I guess the eldest born son gets the father's first name in order for Steam to not know the difference.

Valve is a disgusting company. They have been trying to push their own hardware to lock people into their ecosystem since I can remember and they have been overcharging for years. They hold an effective monopoly and use underhanded tactics to suppress their competition.

Neatfeatguy said:

I don't support Steam/Valve anymore. GoG is where my gaming money goes.

I won't give Valve the satisfaction of knowing when I die!

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Well folks it can get worse. Rumours M$ is thinking of buying Valve. STEAM won't work without NPU in the future.

kiwigraeme said:

So you a like a time lord. what iteration Scavengerspc are you the second or sixth ?

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Time Lord is WAY too nerdy for my tastes, and geek speak makes me cringe as much as it does other men that have ever thrown a ball well, and 99% of the women on the Earth.
Maybe they could just call me David. Or Dad.

I think many are missing the point here. Sure, you can give someone your log in credentials or some other marginal work around (for now). You may not care about someone's Steam account. But if we let this test case pass, every company, at least digital company, will find more ways to scr3w regular people. You know many legal and marketing departments are watching to see how much push back there is on this.
Fight back!

Just play it safe and leave a VPN subscription and some basic instructions instead of Steam.

daffy duck said:

Well folks it can get worse. Rumours M$ is thinking of buying Valve. STEAM won't work without NPU in the future.

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Valve being a private company (and being uninterested in selling) means MS can think and consider it aaall they want lol

Seems that Steam is doing what some companies do in regards to pensions when the person dies. Some pensions ends at death, meaning the money goes back into the company and there are no survivorships or beneficiaries. It all depends on the pension plan terms.

Thrackerzod said:

The difference is, you actually own your house and car so no one can take them away. You do not own your games on Steam, you just have a license to play them. Not saying I agree with it, after all if you buy a game on a physical disc you can resell that disc even though you still don't own the software that is on it. I think this is something that will have to be settled in court eventually.

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ScottSoapbox said:

Time to start reading those contracts you agree to during transactions to learn what you are actually buying.

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I've discussed this in another thread here recently, the crux of the issue is, I pressed "Buy". I "Purchased" my game, I didn't rent it, I didn't borrow it, I didn't hire it, I purchased it.

I do agree this will need to be settled in court some day, you cannot present me a "Buy" button, then once I've created an account with the various publishers systems, get given a massive T&C's that essentially claim I don't own the game I just purchased, but now rent it for a limited time, After the fact that I just purchased it.

Hence my comment about governments doing their job, they wouldn't allow a company like Ford to do this, imagine walking into a car dealership, you find the car you want, they sell it to you, full price, you Purchase it, you Buy the car, not rent, not on finance, you outright purchase the car. Then, just before you leave the forecourt, you're handed a 30,000 page T&C's to sign before you can start the engine to go on your merry way, and within those terms, they basically can take the car away from you at any point in-time. It simply wouldn't fly.

Apparently, buying a digital game on Steam means renting a game or borrowing a game license or playing a game at a certain time
so, since we don't own the digital games we bought, maybe we shouldn't think about passing them on to our relatives.. as they don't necessarily like or play the games they inherited, and it's not certain that the games we buy will run well, especially after a long time..

but with this "buying but not owning" thing, I'm starting to think about switching to another platform..

I'm sure my nephews don't like my choice of steam games so no "last games and testaments".

I ran into this when my Father-in-law died about 4 years ago and my son wanted to the play his grandfathers games.

I just logged into his account, setup family sharing, and issue solved.

Dad's other account s we just reset the password and setup the account so they could be logged into by other family members and that problem solved as well. as long as everyone remembered t log out when done we haven't had any issues.

umeng2002 said:

How will they know if you die?

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People are always contacting Facebook, Instagram etc to get access to a deceased loved one's account. I would image a few people have reached out to steam for the same reason.

This is funny af in a morbid yet sad way to me, the easiest thing a person can do is ask the person youre trying to mooch from for their password before they kick the bucket, this isnt rocket science, or will worthy.

also, someone angry as hell at a funeral because they cant get access to granpops copy of vanquish or future classic days gone is truly funny in my eyes.

steam cant stop some geriatric nerd from writing his steam/email passwords down and passing it on to someone, I mean it'll be weird that they'll have accounts that have been active for 122 years but humanity is getting more long lived y'know.

gamers just seem to live in a constant state of rabid anger.....better start writing those credentials down.

This is the domain of probate law and needs to be decided in the courts.

If I get divorced does my ex get half my games?

Burty117 said:

Come on governments, wake the f*ck up and start laying down the law here.

Imagine dying, your will is simple, just says “give everything to my wife”, she gets the house, the car, the money in the bank, and the debts as well of course, but digitally purchased games? Nope…

Soon Nissan ask for their car back as the original owner has died, soon the estate agent kicks you out of your own house because the person on the paperwork has died… you wouldn’t let either of those things happen… yet government seem to just, not care when it’s digital goods?

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It's not a problem with the government. It's a problem with the consumers(you, me, us)! We keep agreeing to 150pgs of TOS's that we don't read and checking the boxes. The only way we as consumers don't get screwed over is for we as consumers to stand together and say "No, we're not going to take it anymore" and stand up for our rights, or the rights that we think we should have and deserve. If we want the government to do something about it then we have to vote for the people that are going to make that happen. In North America we're too busy fighting about Left vs Right and who said what to have enough time to think about and fight for the same consumer protections that are afforded to those in other countries all around the world! If we're foolish enough to keep paying $1,500-8,000 for a flat screen TV with a 90day warranty they're going to keep selling them to us with a 90d warranty. If we're foolish enough to buy a digital game to which we only own a license that can be revoked or taken from us at any time they're going to keep selling them to us. The consumer has the ability to tell the market what we will and won't accept, we're just too damn ignorant to use the ability and keep taking what's offered with a smile on our face.

It never occurred to me to try to give anyone my Steam account in my will. But, yeah, I'd just include in my will that "You get this piece of paper or file with stuff in it, you get this one" and they can have the logins and passwords for those accounts I wanted to hand down.

Now, as a practical matter, you'd also need to keep the phone or ipad active long enough to log into any apps that use an authenticator so the e-mail address and phone number can be updated (and depending on the app you may be able to update those directly from the still-logged-in phone, ipad, etc.). I suppose you'd want to mention this on the auxillary page with credentials, since otherwise it's something one could EASILY overlook and still end up locked out of the account despite having the username and password.

I suppose if you were worried about your inheritors being dicks about it, you could put something in the will specifying how the phone/ipad/etc. is handled so everyone that needs it has access to it before it's deactivated. For most people real life is not a soap opera so I imagine that'd usually not be necessary though.