I love steam and valve. I have around 3k in steam games and it makes me think that steam account inheritance should be a more serious topic. I don’t currently have kids but when I think about all of the games I’ve played over the years I want my kids to be able to go through my library post mortem. At the end of the day I think there should be some method of transfer. I’m not saying if I have 15 kids they should all get duplicate game rights but it could be treated the same way a physical collection of games would be. I think it would create generational appreciation for steam and the games I’ve purchased. I know this gets brought up often but steam should seriously consider a process for it. I appreciate most of Gaben‘s practices but the fact that he hasn’t given a “legal“ process makes me confused on how I should treat my library when I die. How do yall see it?
Edit: I know you technically dont own these games but you do own the licenses. I just think that the legislation should change to be more in line with physical copies. I have heard steam wont enforce these policies unless pressured to but I think steam is also in a great position to influence this change. Thanks everybody for sharing. Hopefully there will be a better framework in the future
just live forever bro it's no big deal
Exactly. It's the easiest method. Just remember to not die, and you should be fine.
I don’t understand why governments don’t just ban dying, Svalbard islands do. Just make dying illegal, problem solved
Exactly. Just become a vampire and live forever. Don't know why more people don't use this easy hack.
at least long enough to clear the backlog
With 3k games that’s pretty much forever
Damn millennials will now bankrupt the funeral industry.
good, the funeral industry is predatory as fuck
Here we go with blaming the millennials, I want my god damn coffee
Edit, I’m a little drunk so wanted to make it clear this was said as the typically British sarcastic millennial that I am
Step 1 make a family share account for the kids and you.
Step 2 leave the passwords to all of them when you die.
Best solution so far, most games can be shared among everyone so no need to divide it or transfer it between them.
Step 3 don't tell Valve
Gaben has all but said Valve won't enforce this sort of thing unless compelled to do so by legal action. There's probably people already taking advantage of family sharing to access the accounts of dead relatives.
It's the easiest way to play games you haven't purchased
Honestly the hard part is just making sure they're dead first
1 to the head, 2 to the chest is what I’ve always heard…. IANAHM so YMMV
r/HolUp
Isn't it the opposite? 2 to the chest (easier to hit) 1 to the head (now that the stopping power of the bullet has immobilized your assailant)
Two in the head Makes sure it's dead.
Why is making a family share account required if they have the login info?
So that they can continue using their own accounts while having access to the wider family share library.
Because if your account is shared between others passwordwise you are breaking TOS, family share lets you use almost all the games all the time on each kids own steam account instead of having 2 different accounts and everyone sharing the same username for multiplayer and such.
Family share honestly fucking rocks, my brother added like 400 games to my library when he joined mine.
Ever since they changed how the shared library works it is insanely good! Even if i own the game but in the family library there is a copy with DLC i can just swap to that copy with the ONLY downside being that no one else can play that copy at the same time. Also it not kicking you off a shared game just because the other person starts a game is the absolute best!!
Yep, and if your family owns 2 copies 2 players can play the same game too, it really is one of the reasons why I like Valve so much.
Fair, I think this is the best option if you can keep steam from finding out
There has been cases where some idiot contacted steam support to transfer it and they only end up deleting the account. For now, just shut your mouth, keep it to yourself and pass it down unless they make a clear statement that they will change that policy.
They will never change that policy, for the simple reason that it is not their call to make. They have no say in that.
You cannot pass on games to other people, for the simple reason that you don’t own them (and you never did, even though a lot of people still believe that).
Your payment just grants you a limited, non-transferable and revocable license to play that game. That license is granted by the publisher of the game, not Steam. Steam is just the middleman.
"Mr flappy, it says here you're 112 years old and have been using your account every day for the past 90 years, is this accurate?"
I have no idea why such people like OP exist. Like why will they deliberately ask for trouble?
my guy we have a bunch of dumbasses filming themselves and spreading their stupidity around. There were some people who insisted on injecting ivermectin and bleach into their bodies because the tv told them to.
what OP is asking is minor. Some people just dont know how the law works or dont have the street smarts for some reason or another. The good thing i guess from this is that op didnt fuck around and find out what he did if he did contact steam support.
Cant u just give ur kids the password??
Yea but the account isn’t protected from legal action
bro valve isn't going to sue your kids
Unless they're forced to. It's important to understand that decision.
They also don't sue anyone, they just straight up close the account.
Look man. This has nothing to do with steam.
You say "it could be the treated the same way a physical collection" but it's not.
You don't own any game. You have a license to get to play the game. You can't give away something you never had. And this ain't something new. This is how it's always been. But people were just unaware.
Look at anytime any company changes their terms and conditions. We are powerless to stop it. The only way this would change is if there is a literal law to allow it. Cause again, why would a game company allow it willingly?
Even game preservation itself is hard. There are so many games from last century that are just gone cause no one gave a fuck about it before. It's a common event where the game's source codes are lost.
As of now, just give your credentials to your kids. They can make accounts and family share it to play. All 15 of your future kids.
But just a warning. Even one day in the future they get inherit them, chances are future pc ain't gonna be able to run them. So your backlog is gonna be unplayed even among future generations.
Not being able to run is a small issue (considering the state of emulation) compared to it being from awkward to impossible to back up Steam games and run them offline (and now you might need to emulate Steam too !).
Prefer getting offline installers directly from developers or stores (like Matrix-Slitherine or GoG) that allow that, and boycott games with DRM.
Once you download a game from steam, you have technically downloaded it, can then copy that 'install' anywhere and you have a backup.. There are also already Steam 'emulators' meant to allow offline/LAN play in places with no or terrible internet... (And no, I wont provide any more info or links as they can also be used for piracy, and is obviously illegal and against the sub rules etc)
So you could say it's kinda already done/doable to 'archive' playable versions of -most- steam games
Emphasis on 'most'. Which I am not even sure is the case, but there are certainly at least a large minority for which you can indeed do it. But the problem is all the other ones.
And I will provide the obviously legal (but awkward) way by which you can do it.
But this is still different from having a proper offline installer :
offline installers also often install shared third-party libraries that the software might rely on, but this form of backup won't preserve.
we also have offline updates that reliably update a specific version of the game to another one. I am not aware of the Steam equivalent for that ?
The type of Steam emulation I was talking about includes most of the Steam '3rd party' libraries that are required etc, it's only when you get into other 'None Valve' functionality and features that you will start running into issues, things such as additional DRM outside Steam, other/3rd party launchers etc.... but then there are other ways to deal with them..
Sure, I agree it's not ideal, and yes I get your point about installers etc (Although the scene on the high seas has some nice installers around, which do also include prerequesites etc) - but again, some smart people are able to package the requirements together for preservation... this is what we're talking about afterall, not piracy...
for preservation you only need to preserve the game, and it's assets etc... doesn't always mean you will include all required external libraries etc...
Yeah, but again it's the same point. You are able to get offline installers because those devs/companies agreed.
But look at most people's library of steam games. How many of them are even available for such cases?
My point is that there are things we can do too to do better.
And you are part of the problem if you give up and try to use other's people bad behaviour as an excuse.
For instance, historically slavery was normal. Should we not care about preventing it ?
How do you expect Valve to provide a global library for all eternity for tens of thousands of games? Imagine the amount of work required to make it a reality with thousands of developers and their IPs and terms etc.
I'm not sure why you thought I expected that ?
There's many ways to interpret licensing. They transfer between company employees all the time.
If they wanted to they could interpret it as "Steam User Kabirdb is licensed for the following" and then when you die your kids could contact steam support and say you died and that they are now going to be using Steam User Kabirdb and Steam can say that's fine since the license is for that account they just can't transfer it to Steam User Son of Kabirdb
But you should be able to transfer the license to others. That is a rather basic consumer right, even EU courts enforced it...
...and that's when Valve changed the Steam TOS to not include the word "license" and now we have a "lifetime subscription" instead.
Honestly, this is a thing that can be fought and enforced on a national/worldwide level, but the polititians don't care about it. We have to wait for the gamer generations to come to power positions for things to change.
What other leases work like that (in EU or elsewhere), where you can pass on the exact same leasing agreement/contract to a descendant, once you die? Never heard about that before.
Usually contracts bound to individuals are dismantled when the person die, unless something specific has been agreed beforehand.
Hence it was about an instance/token of a license which is an item that is owned, not a contract.
What? Again, token or no token, "lifetime subscription" or "license", what sort of things, that uses those, allows you to pass them on to other people? You say "even EU courts enforced it" but what exactly are you saying they've enforced?
I mean this https://brodies.com/insights/ip-technology-and-data/european-court-confirms-the-right-to-resell-used-software-licences/
It's not up to Steam/Valve, they have to obey copyright laws.
Steam/Valve could do better here though, and stop using "Buy" as the keyword when in reality, no one is actually "Buying" any games from Steam in the way we normally understand that word.
At least it'd clear up some confusion about what is supposed to happen when you eventually die.
steam and UK consumer rights actually is pushing for that. They are currently trying to force games to be upfront about these contracts in laymans terms.
Really interested in what's going to happen when we get accounts where the owner is "still alive" and the owner's age is like 120 years old still playing games when it's obvious someone else is using the account. Will Valve just ignore this or what?
Your best bet currently that I'm aware of would be a collection of DRM free games from places like GOG. Can get external HDD's and back all the games up offline to not be taken away and left for future descendents.
I've always thought of you as my dad.
There exists no legal procedure for this. You aren't buying the game, you are using steam as a platform to buy a licence from the publisher of the game you want to play.
For steam to agree to this, the publisher would have to agree to it.
The only thing you can do is passing down login credentials and hope that your heir isn't stupid enough to ever mention to steam support that you have passed away.
Dude just shush it. They will never allow us to transfer ownership of our game libraries bc we don’t own any of the games! Just give your kids your pw and that’s all.
Dude, I have the entire Furry Shades of Gay, and Sex and The Furry Titty game on my steam account. If I have kids, they are never going to learn about that.
If it's so important to you, set up a will and include the relevant passwords required to access the account, even if it means email passwords for account retrieval. Otherwise just use family sharing like the rest.
Username and password inheritance is gonna be a big thing in the next few years.
You don’t technically own those games. Your kids won’t inherit the licenses to play them.
Edit: I agree with your update on legislation. Ownership of digital content should be protected moving forward.
Just put your password in your will
It's one of those don't ask don't tell situations. Unless you're a very high profile celebrity they won't find out you died unless you tell them, or maybe in like...60 years when it starts to be unlikely that you've got a 70+ year old account.
Best you can do right now is write down your passwords in a safe place, tell your family not to throw it away or delete it or tell Steam that you died.
There has been some high profile people trying to push back, but it's one of those things where right now the companies are winning with their "payment is not ownership" approach with it.
I know Bruce Willis was making noise with Apple about it because he said he wants to pass down his music collection. Sad as it is, he may die soon, and that's when we'd find out for sure, but it would require his family going to court against a multi-billion dollar company and probably spending millions of dollars on legal fees.
Hey 70+ is still possible, I got mine at 13 or so, so if I line to 83
My point was that's the timeframe when it's likely for questions to come up.
True
But yeah unless you’re famous steam isn’t checking every account’s person’s death, I don’t even know how they could, it’s not like they even have your ID, just a name
The most likely form would be that at a certain point they'd send a security prompt. Like at 20 years 2FA becomes mandatory, at 40 years they flag accounts with mismatched billing info and make them answer the security questions.
Or just press the button to make everyone have to log in again. Lots of people probably rely on the account remembering the password.
Some bean counter will at some point look at it as potentially thousands of dollars per account left on the table since the kids pass around dad's account instead of making their own accounts and buying their own individual copy.
I don’t even remember my password for steam now, if it wasn’t stored on my computer keychain
Yeah so until Valve actually makes it legal to transfer accounts your best - and really only - way is to give your kids your username and pass and telling them that they should NEVER admit to valve that they are not the original owner - as in you.
You can also make steam family so they can have their own accounts.
In your will, put username and password 😁
The only thing standing between you and keeping the games you paid for in perpetuity is some pretty weak DRM and a storage solution. You won't have Steam's digital services anymore, but I don't think "eternal access to Steam's services" is a demand that any reasonable person is making.
You are also free to simply die, not tell Valve, and let your kids use your account until such a time that steam says "there's no way this fucker is still alive" and cuts the cord.
I'd imagine that Valve can't simply renag on the agreements that it made with publishers and developers on the terms of sales on their platform without consulting all of them first.
Set a Family share. And write down your account info plus some proof of purchase like game keys and what not.
With the way the world is going currently, the last thing we need is all this "inheritance" thingies. I don't want some government treating this as an "inheritance" just so they can tax it.
Turn on family sharing, hand the password to the kids when it's time.
You buy on GOG and put the DRM-free games on a hard drive.
The method of Transfer = (1) Make a file (2) Put all of your important information in there including your Last will and Testament, policies, banking information, ownership info, etc. (3) include a page for your all your passwords, pin numbers, 2FA methods, phone locks, recovery methods, etc. (4) put the file in a safe (locked) place (5) make sure somebody in your family knows where the file is.
Somebody will have to force Steam into a law suit for inheritance.
Companies decided that the accounts are just personal, but it will be up to the courts if this will hold up in the long term.
Make a family group with your account. Other family members can then access games from your account.
The issue is in part one caused by developers and publishers. They don't want game licences transferred between individuals.
It's not an issue Valve can even fix, Valve would be able to transfer your account but your game licenses are given to you by publishers and these thousands of publishers from tons of different countries would need to agree on that and that's not happening unless we will get some major global licensing law change forcing them to do that.
And about transferring (selling)singular digital licenses at will - that's not going to happen because there is no way to make something like that sustainable without making gaming as a whole into pure garbage.
This has been an open question for a while. It's interesting, but as others have said, the reality of digital files is that they're intangible, and wholly subject to digital controls. There's not really a solid way to pass down games and accounts like some kind of inheritance.
If you're really concerned about games preservation and passing it down, maybe investigate what it would take to strip DRM out of every game in your collection, and make an archive of those stripped copies? Maybe even make that readily available to your kids or something, much in the same way that people make home media servers?
If there will ever be a process for that, it must be done with steam support. Otherwise, it will be an open door for hackers/scammers to steal your account.
I also don't have kids and don't plan to get any, but I would just give my account to a friend or to their kids. As long as you won't announce it to the Internet, no one will care
Just write down and give your username , password ez
Or just give them your email and steam password and account info in your will
Just upload your soul to the steam cloud like the rest of us
Sail the seas to make a backup or buy em on gog
My information is written down and in a safety deposit box at the bank if I was to die tomorrow my kids know how to access all of my gaming accounts because they would immediately become their gaming accounts upon my death it's in the will legally binding lol.
Just give the password to your kid. Whatevs. Doesn't have to be legal.
The problem isn't Steam/Valve it's all the other companies with their games on Steam. They are the ones that needs allow this to be possible.
I family share with my cousin, he passed away in May, and his family told me to keep all his games etc anyways so that included his steam library and I was able to login add my phone etc so if something were to happen to the family share I still have his account at the very least, but I contacted Valve and explained the situation and asked like if I can provide the legal documents could his account be merged with mine as long as the executor of estate approves it or whatever, basically they told me if he has passed away provide the documents and we will delete the account… I was like well that’s dumb. At the very least turn the account into a memorial or something don’t just delete it? I do see in the next 20-30 years as more and more steam account holders get older and pass etc it will definitely become a much bigger issue and laws may start coming into place.
https://preview.redd.it/d5iimq00nccg1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=06d6040d5df5f1e434cf894c50884ff02c3acf37
I don’t believe the licenses are transferable.
Technically, valve could change that.
Not up to valve. It's up to the individual publishers.
Gabe said this a while ago,
Nothing better than a piece of paper whit Ur password u shared whit them
You either successfully hand it over with your digital identity or you put your account on their family sharing so your stuff is always with them.
Then Steam wouldn't make as much money with new accounts. Meaning they would have to do something dumb like go public or charge a subscription to keep everything running
The reason there isn't a legal process is because steam doesn't own the licenses to your games. They simply act as the middle man.
Your license is still on the hand of the publisher of the game.
Which is why, more people should start looking at a more consumer friendly store, like gog, in which you de facto own a copy of the software.
If I ever have kids, I'm letting them inherit my account
Unless you are already 70+ most of games you bought digitally, most likely won't work in next 30-50 years. That is due to hardware evelution. Unless someone specifically will have emulators, or old hardware.
Steam ownership is a digital licence based. Legally most of them can not be passed to other owner. Also, you live in digital subscription era. These services are not inhearitable. Good luck for games that rely on online services.
Steam my as well be none existent in 10 - 50 years. So I wouldn't be count on any digital inheritance in any reliable and meaningful way. Any online service can be shut down literally at any time. And imagine hyppthetically there is global permanent internet outage. We already have seen glimpses of it in past few months. Then what?
You want to leave digital inheritance? Make sure you own games that are DRM free. Burn them on DVDs, pendrives, SSDs. Problem solved.
Also just in general I expect games will develop so few will play ones from now in 30-50 years especially as reboots and remakes of games happens. How many people today want to play games from the 1990’s even, much less the 1970’s
Some sure but it’s hardly mainstream, graphics by the 2080’s will probably make most modern games look very outdated
True.
Also to add to this: Even games with timeless graphics, like Minecraft, Ori, Hollow Night, etc. they will (or at least most of them) most likely will eventually be rendered obsolete at some point in the future, as new kid on the block will pop in. Another Minecraft like, or another Hollow Night like. Usually it is matter of a time.
Then hardly there will be even an incentive to play these ancient games, as a collection of an inheritance. At least for the majority.
However, me personally in a contrast, I still come back every few years to some older titles. For an example Warzone 2100 RTS, Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Although, these games are still maintained by the community. Also other old time RTS games too. Sometimes I doo look into 90s titles as of nostalgy. But not that I wouldn't live withouth them. There are many good alternatives of later dates.
But certain past experiences seems not been replaced, nor found an equivalent in the modern era of gaming. At least for me.
Check my post dear friend: https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/s/KSnxAkHTKG
It's not entirely within Valve's control. Despite the buttons saying 'purchase' or 'buy', most of what you're getting through steam are semi-durable but non-transferable licenses for digital copies of media ultimately controlled by third parties, with steam acting as a platform and marketplace.
So the first step is to establish a legal precedent for individual ownership and property rights when it comes to digitally distributed media, at least the stuff that is "purchased" from platforms and marketplaces like Steam.
It’s not that deep
Just let it go
Plus that’s against steam tos
I feel like because Steam says "Buy" in the UI, it's actually misleading what you're "Buying". You aren't actually "Buying" a game like a traditional physical copy, what you are doing, is paying a one-time price for a indefinite license to download and play that game, via Steam.
If Steam was more upfront about what actually is happening (not "Buying"), then I feel like this would kind of answer itself, since no other "leases" like that actually work with inheritance.
I have two kids.
Yours won't give a flying fuck about whether you leave them access to your Steam collection. Video-gaming is hardly fifty years old as an activity, and it's kind of ridiculous to be concerned with whether something is going to continue working in 15-20 years.
You're putting the cart so far ahead of the horse here, OP. If you want your kids to remember your gaming habit fondly, the best thing you can do is not allow it to interfere with parental duties.
please have the kids first, then ask them what they want when you die. best valve can do with todays technology is put a little gravestone border on your profile for future generations so they can visit that every year and put some digital flowers in the comments. we are just not there yet
Sorry but your kids don’t want to play your shitty backlogs either. There’s only going to be more games that come out and all the good ones will have remasters to update graphics.