Valve confirms your Steam account cannot be transferred to anyone after you die | Your Steam games will go to the grave with you

Your Steam games will go to the grave with you

Great, then I'll finally have some time to play them....

If steam did allow transfers this way, I can imagine it being a new type scam where people fabricate death documents to steal steam accounts.

Give your kids your passwords, folks

Life Pro Tip: Register an LLC to buy your steam games under. The LLC will never die and you can transfer ownership of the business entity while it retains control of the steam account.

just share your login lol

Do they check? Or can i just give my password to my homie in a letter

"Dear homie,

if you are reading this, it means that i'm on the long path to meet with master Kaio to train my ass off to death in the afterlife. Until we meet again, this is my user and pass of my steam account.

PS: i didn't bought the porno VR games. Someone gifted them to me.

Your bro in eternity,

Siegfried"

Summary:

• This means that when a Steam user passes away, their entire game library and account cannot be bequeathed or transferred to their loved ones.
• The gaming community has expressed frustration over this policy, with some suggesting workarounds like sharing login credentials, but these may only be temporary solutions.
• This issue highlights the broader problem with digital purchases, as users do not truly "own" the content they buy, but rather have a license to access it.

Oh I didn't own my steam account it was created for my future children. it's a trust.

When you're dead but someone has got into your steam account and is about to find all of your anime titty games

“And to my son, I bequeath my steam account - user is blah and password is blah”

Checkmate steam

Bury me with my backlog.

Who's notifying Valve someone with an account has died? Link the dead person's account to a steam family and enjoy the inheritance.

Assuming that the world continues to exist in a way that lets me have a steam account at the time of my natural lifespans average end (another... 46 years):

My steam library grows at a slower rate than my mass storage has, and I'm quite confident that one will be able to fit my entire steam library as it currently is on a normal and affordable drive in at most 15 years.

With those two facts in play I can remain confident in my ability to crack everything I own (assuming I even want everything) and safely store it for at-will passing down to as many people as I want.

But thanks for the reminder to not blindly trust you, Valve. Always useful to have those.

Well, if you're stupid enough to tell valve about the death that is

So sad I won't be able to bequeath "Fifty Shades of Fur - Gay Erotic Visual Novel 18+" to my grandchildren

Once again further diluting the meaning of the words "bought" and "sold"

just don't die

They also don’t let you transfer purchases if for instance you’re being stalked

Had a friend lose a thousand games that way

Sounds ripe for a legal challenge, but neo-ownership of digital-goods is already so fragile.

I really feel like this won't/can't be enforced.

To be absolutely clear, this is not new. Steam accounts being non-transferrable and not your property has always been how Steam's terms work. It's not even the first time the death situation comes up.

Because digital ownership sucks, and that absolutely, very much includes Steam. If you can't keep an offline copy you don't own it.

But honestly, given the new family groups Steam came up with this gets weirder now. Other accounts that are more closely tied to hardware are one thing, and I do wish we had a more effective and reliable way to hand over passwords and credentials to relatives in case of emergency, but it's so weird that now your mom can have an accident and you slowly see the games she was sharing with you over that system fade away as her account gets shuttered. It's such a grim, sci-fi distopian piece of minutia. This is not a great timeline we landed on.

Does this apply to developer accounts? Because if so this would be dumb as fuck.

So you can inherit a house, but not a freakin' game... is that even legal?

Rare steam L

EU, do your thing

Seems like a shitty hill to die, sacrificing entire generations of family remaining on your platform over old obsolete games on a subscription service. Tell me the video game industry is stale without telling me the video game industry is stale.

What they dont know wont hurt you

I’d like to see them try stopping me giving my kids my password.

I had been literally planning on putting my Steam account in the will...

My family plays the games under my account now. I imagine not much will change when I'm dead.

This is annoying as we buy everything under my wifes account and we hook up mine with family sharing.

Then come fucking stop me

So thats why they say not to give your password to anyone.

Soon they’ll clarify their philosophical stance on identity & claim a person changes so much from moment to moment that yesterday-you doesn’t exist anymore, & therefore must pay again

Bring back big boned Gaben

whatever im not even playing them when im not dead

Can you be in the steam family group with a dead person?

Imagine if it said "Epic" instead of "Steam" in the headline.

This is Valve thinking ahead - when we invent the ability to respawn, we can just log back in like death never happened.

So is a flat rate life rental rather than a purchase, the nth stuff that is not of your property but a concession...

But I was already planning on leaving mine to my son.

Guess he just gets my username and password.

Note to self, turn off 2fa before I die

All I have to do is leave the username and password to my steam account and email address to someone else in my will. 🤦‍♂️

What Stream support have sent that person is probably an accurate representation of what happens when you apply their policies as written. Write another article if they are seen enforcing it.

Luckily, SteamDRM is usually easy to bypass, so if that happens one could prepare accordingly.

GOG

Do you think Valve is going to start deleting accounts over 100 years old?

Permanently Deleted

Means you don't own anything then. It is a lost autonomy. Once lost, you will only lose more with time.

Yarrrr

It's unlikely that would survive a lawsuit. If they claim the games have value, as evidenced by then having a price, then that value can be transferred.

Just don't tell them lol. My friend in school gave me his steam account that had some games on it that I had no money for and he wasn't using it anymore. Still my main steam account 8 years later.

Lol and what's stopping me from just giving them my account info

Your Steam games will go to the grave with you

Just like my porn!

Damn, I guess I am living forever now.

Sucks for your kids

Tough shit. Someone needs to enjoy the games.

And who says you have to notify Valve with what you do to your account?

On one hand, that's shitty.

On the other hand, I cant imagine anyone in my family gives a shit about my games.

And to my treasured grandson, I leave my steam account details written on an old napkin.

doesn't matter, I don't have any friends anyway.

Did anyone actually think they? Is there anywhere where it is allowed to share your username and password with anyone else in order to use your account, whether you live or not?

Why is there even a debate about this? You need emulators to play 10 year old games, maybe twenty. In 60 years you'll need who knows what to be able to play it. The question is whether people will want play them at all. There might be a VR with anally plugged interface which would lack support for hand controllers.

R U SERIUSSS?!!1 wait a minute, I don't have a steam account...dag nabbit..

Wooo... glad I stopped investing into video games about a decade ago. Between this and Ubisoft's, "DEI" into their video games lol.. fk the whack gaming industry.