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Your Steam games will go to the grave with you
Great, then I’ll finally have some time to play them…
finally some cloud gaming
The only cloud gaming I will accept
Wait a minute… why is it so hot here? That can’t be good for the… Windows Vista computer?! Where the heck am I?
You got Vista? I got Windows ME!
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.
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.
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Oh for sure, but it’s definitely a concern for stuff like this. It’s a lot easier for valve to just expect people to pass login info down as a way to pass on an account.
Valve actually migrating purchases from one account to another risks upsetting publishers, and requires whole new policies on how to verify death and verify who should receive the account. Finally there’s the risk of scams and having to resolve them. Overall it’s a lot of headache for valve, I’m not surprised they’re not jumping to offer it officially.
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Transferring ownership of the account also transfers the game license owned by the account. Still upset publisher
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True but ultimately this is about ownership - we don’t own our games. We license them - that is what is lost with Steam and DRM, and moving away from physical media.
GOG is an alternative in that you can download and back up the installers for your games (mostly) but even then do you own your ganes?
I’d like you to read what you just wrote very slowly and imagine it’s somebody else saying it, just to visualize if it’s an absolutey bonkers thing to say.
There’s also items in people’s accounts
I’d like you to read what you just wrote veeeeery slowly…
Yes, I know, and people should have access to them. Just share passwords with loved ones and they can take the items out eventually. Steam needs to do things like this because publishers are assholes who want it.
Bury me with my backlog.
And browser history
Nah we deleting that and then denying it
My family plays the games under my account now. I imagine not much will change when I’m dead.
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Put your passwords in your will
Yes I agree but I’m telling them family sharing being on is not sufficient.
Pretty sure I’m good. Account email is a forwarder to a family domain and they have access to everything relating to the account. For all intents and purposes, it’s just me logging in from the grave.
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Sorry for not being clear, I wasn’t aware family sharing was even a thing. In my case, everyone is using my credentials to log into and use the games under my account. All the same property so same IP.
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Yeah, but Valve doesn’t really give a shit if it’s abused. Steam is a solitary positive example of the weird “(mostly)benevolent monopoly” idea. GabeN owns the company, there aren’t any shareholders to appease, so as long as he’s alive steam will be solid. I hope he has a successor picked out that can uphold his ideals.
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EU, do your thing
not sure what EU should do here
Regulate digital purchases.
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.
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So thats why they say not to give your password to anyone.
This is Valve thinking ahead - when we invent the ability to respawn, we can just log back in like death never happened.
Imagine if it said “Epic” instead of “Steam” in the headline.
No one give af cuz Epic sucks?
GOG
Oh I didn’t own my steam account it was created for my future children. it’s a trust.
Lol. That’s hilarious. But unfortunately you never owned the games in the first place. You rented the privilege to play the game for life?..life of the rental company or your life only? Oh man, we gotta go thru the small print on this.
“Add to Cart”, “Continue Shopping”, “Purchase for myself”, “Purchase as a gift”, “Purchase”.
Who knows, one day a court may find these terms could lead people into believing they’re buying a game and force some companies to allow us to to trade or resell them (an EU court most probably).
Purchased should mean what it means for other things like cars or apples…you get a copy of an apple via a purchase and you are guaranteed to be able to use that apple in any manner you please. So for example, you could eat it, ferment it, store it in resin for posterity and for future humans to recreate it. There aren’t any limits to a purchase. So I agree, maybe we need ask the supremes of the supreme court if purchasing means different things. So if I purchase sex from a prostitute legally in Las Vegas, does that prostitute need to specifically state what activities I will own? Or if I go to Costco and buy a fried chicken, does Costco need to specifically state that the chicken is not just a rental but a final exchange between you and Costco, money for dead poultry. More relatable, a screw driver from home Depot, that thing will last a few uses, so do you still own it if home Depot goes down? Can you still rotate screws with it?
Software can be both a product and a service:
- it’s a product when running on my computer (i.e. the game)
- it’s a service when running on their computer (i.e. providing the hosting for downloading, multiplayer client-server hosting).
The issue preventing one practically enacting on software is that copyright defaults to preventing you redistributing it, and you need the source code to be able to modify (fully). Thankfully some games are free software/open source when you can act on your ownership.So that should be “I purchased a game” when you got a detached product that is functional forever… unless the makers make a deal with Microsoft to fuck it up on the next illegally forced update or with Nvidia to change the next card such that it is unplayable.
And it should be “I purchased…I subscribed to this online game” when you know that shit is not yours, so don’t expect it to last.
That would at least be more honest… from my perspective anyway. The games industry has done this for so long that this is the norm for generatations who grew up with consoles being online - this is “purchasing” to some as words have usages and not inate meaning.
It would be better if they just stopped doing that but you get more money that way.
“yes, you made a purchase. But what you purchased were tickets. Tickets to specific rides at a theme park. You did not buy the rides. You bought tickets for the rides. Those tickets are valid for your personal use. If you are not the one using them, they are not to be used.” –Their argument in court probably.
You can resell Windows CD keys legally in the EU as the courts rejected the “only for you” part of the argument: invalidating that part of the EULA. I probably have the right to resell my Steam game tickets.
“And to my son, I bequeath my steam account - user is blah and password is blah”
Checkmate steam
The article goes into that and states password sharing is against the Eula so technically they can kick you off the service if they find out… IF they find out wink wink
Old and busted: Pretending someone’s alive for their Social Security check
New hotness: Pretending someone’s alive for their Steam account
4 generations later: “I’ve inherited my father’s steam account just as he inherited it from his father and so on. The library has grown ever larger, and yet so many remain untouched. The summer sales have sustained my forefathers and yet I feel hollow. Each year, more games are added to this historic account, but each year brings more regret as the purchases go untouched. I shall make a promise to myself: finish the extensive library, honor my family, complete the library. But first, some more Counter Strike.”
I mean it is not sharing if you are dead, it is bequeathing
I bequeath deez nutz to Jo mama
blah!@birthday-ssn
Means you don’t own anything then. It is a lost autonomy. Once lost, you will only lose more with time.
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Criminals can claim a lot of things but that is not democracy which requires citizens which requires autonomy. Anyone stealing individual autonomy is a traitor.
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Your Steam games will go to the grave with you
Just like my porn!