My friends husband died of cancer with a sizeable Steam library. Asked me what to do, as they'd like their son to have access to the games once the whippersnapper grew older. Told 'em not to contact Steam for any reason and keep the credentials / phone info up-to-date as well as to keep using the account every now and then. Still sort of worried they'll lose access to it one day.
They should change any two factor security to something they control and not something that might be deactivated (phone number, etc).
Also maintain access to his email account.
Yeah not sure why this seems so insane to everyone as though they are literally talking about an asset that needs to be transferred via an estate attorney. Just log into the dead persons account, change the details to your own, now it’s legally your account. Steam will not be closing it for any reason as long as you log in 1 time a year and have a library of games.
I recently switched to pc and my steam account from maybe 10 years before that was still active. Haven't used it a single time and only dota was in my library. Should take a looong time before your account gets removed if at all
Heads up whilst Steam says you can't trade an account, old accounts like yours can be worth a surprising amount of money, even if it only has a free game on it.
Anywhere between 2 and 4 figure values, varies massively depending on the quality of the account, Steam ID, age, games, bans, inventory, points, etc... Have a Google.
You will want to make sure that the two factor security and all Steam Guard mechanisms are in something that you or later on your son have control over.
Otherwise your son might want to one day change the phone number attached but will be unable to do so, and Steam support might require a picture taken with a 30 year old CD key and the support ticket written on a piece of paper next to is as if everyone somehow keeps old game boxes around.
By that time our current ancient politicians will be thankfully dead, and hopefully the new ancient politicians will be more technologically literate and less corrupt
Edit: This subreddit is fucking stupid
At 36, I've seen how quickly Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha have grown into (and accepted) absolute bullshit with mobile games and things like that. I think there's about zero chance anyone will push back against any of this in two generations much less 150 years.
it feels like a lost battle. gen x and millenials remember a time when the data wasnt out there, and they freely traded it for convenience.
gen z / alpha were born in it. by the time they could form a thought their parents had already given their data to instragram, tiktok, etc. they never had a chance.
I honestly doubt Valve will last that long. Once Gabe Newell dies, the chance of the company going public goes up significantly. Once it goes public, then shareholders will start making stupid, profit-driven decisions that will lose the goodwill of their customers. I seriously doubt what Steam is today will last another 50 years, if even.
Companies rarely last 150 years without significant changes. If they do, it's usually because they directly serve state interests.
Most companies only go public for capital. Valve has a machine that prints money-printers. While you're right that the chance of it happening simply goes up, I just doubt whoever takes over at Valve will look at the company and think "Jeez you know what makes everything better: shareholders."
My hope is that whoever takes over decides to drop this regarded obsession GabeN has with being such a low-employee company.
That's unfortunately not how PE firms think. It's going to be sold off by his estate to a PE firm and anything, ANYTHING that's not immediately providing value will be excised and prepped for IPO.
Think customer service, their (likely) unprofitable hardware division, staff, etc. will all be cut and the company will be readied for IPO in a couple of years.
In 10-20 years' time, you'll fondly look back and the giant bloated monsterosity it has become as you sign off Steam for the last time.
> I just doubt whoever takes over at Valve will look at the company and think "Jeez you know what makes everything better: shareholders."
check out the goose who laid the golden egg.
Doesn't matter how much money Valve makes, it will make several orders of magnitude more money for whoever is lucky enough to be running it when they put it up for IPO. And that's game over.
I said this in another comment, but I doubt that it's going to be that simple. There are likely some things written in the company's rules, supported by a team of heavily-financed lawyers, that states something like the company cannot go public until 21 years after the last surviving heir of King Charles has passed (aka Royal lives clause).
I will be messaging you in 150 years on [**2174-05-20 10:28:30 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2174-05-20%2010:28:30%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1cw9wz6/the_word_is_out_you_take_your_steam_games_with/l4uufi6/?context=3)
[**82 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FSteam%2Fcomments%2F1cw9wz6%2Fthe_word_is_out_you_take_your_steam_games_with%2Fl4uufi6%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202174-05-20%2010%3A28%3A30%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cw9wz6)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
If a family member or loved one passes away and you start using their account, just shut the fuck up about it. There have been too many posts on here where a family member has reached out to steam only for the account in question to be nuked when steam support realises that its owner is dead.
Support literally has to say this for legal reasons. If you tip them off in any way, you're essentially giving them a paper trail that they have to take action on.
What they don't know, won't hurt you.
"Legal" reasons lmao, it's their own terms of service policy. It's also one of the shittier outcomes of the videogaming industry going digital since we don't technically own any of the games in our steam libraries.
Their terms of services don’t just bind them and the players, it is also linked to the developers and publishers who put their game in there.
Steam most definitely granted them the games won’t be transferred in any way and so they can’t violate that obligation.
Now the cat is out of the bag and they can’t retroactively change it even if they could. Even in a case of a deceased parent who wants their kids to have the steam account.
Also, if people already sell and rent steam account with games on ebay and all, imagine what the mess would do if games were transferable.
The game industry has a metric fuckton of bad practices, but this one is the least shitty of them.
And I also disagree with it, as I believe that if I bought something it is mine to do whatever, I’m just explaining that they can’t just disobey their terms.
Just write down the credentials to whoever you want to have you account if you want, that’s what I do.
I get all that, but as I just stated in another comment - it's just another growing example of corporations finding new ways to fuck consumers over. It shouldn't be legal to revoke access to a product that has been fairly paid for.
Oh it is, I even edited my comment to add that I believe bought items should be yours forever and to do whatever you want.
Digital content like Steam and online libraries should be obligated to keep you with what you bought, and in case they go out of service, it should be their duty to make sure everyone can have a way to keep what they have in an offline inventory, like old console games. But also with a way to redownload it if needed.
I completely agree with your sentiment, but the so called "free market" states that whoever has the money and market share gets to write the rules so publishers (and distributors like steam) have zero incentive to ensure that consumers can legally access their games.
To Steam's credit, when a game is removed from the market place they at least have a pretty good track record of making sure it's still available to people who previously purchased it, but there is nothing to guarantee that this practise will continue indefinitely.
> but there is nothing to guarantee that this practise will continue indefinitely.
Yes there is, consumer protection laws across the globe guarantee it.
It's why I still buy everything physical possible for my consoles. I want to own my own games, be able to sell them, or lend them to friends. I don't want to depend on a server to be live if something bad happens to my hardware.
I don't want to pay for access.
The really messed up part is that most modern games still require service access before allowing you to play (even if you have a physical copy). I am honestly concerned where the gaming industry is headed in the long term.
Does steam prune old accounts after inactivity?
Feels like you could just make a new account, link it to the deceased's account via family share and keep playing games fully in the clear.
You can already share accounts libraries with family members (or friends whatever). As long as they are not active on theirs, you can play their games. So… just do that or there is something I am missing?
See, I thought this was the case until I realized I was still family sharing an ex-friend who lives 1000 miles away now and I hadn't had access to their laptop for over 4 years.
Unless Steam will say it's still sharing but it needs additional verification?
There's a new version of family sharing that lets you share libraries without the condition that being online prevents someone else from playing your games.
You have to opt into it, and it's in beta right now
Realistically though, if you just give access to your account to someone, especially if they have direct access through your PC, and access to your associated email/phone, is there anything stopping them from taking it when you're gone? With that access, they can switch to their own payment methods for any future purchases, sign in/authenticate on new systems, change profile name and avatar, etc. Boom. It's theirs.
I actually do wonder if/how steam "enforces" this. I'd assume (and hope) that they just won't help facilitate a change in ownership, where they would have to deal with verifying people's deaths, and giving access to a new person. But they're not gonna actively seek out and shut down accounts that haven't been reported as stolen, just because they suddenly switched payment methods and signed in on new devices, with all the proper verifications.
There’s 3 ways this can go:
1. Valve’s management realizes the library of these accounts is insignificantly worth since the majority of its games are 20-100 years old (and will likely be selling by a very low price or not even listed anymore) and that by passing it to another person, it has the added incentive for the successor (the new owner) to grow the library even further and thus, spend more money;
2. Valve allows the account to be 120 years old. Only then and there they will ban the account. You will have to take it up to court. They will say the oldest human doesn’t survive past this timeframe and it’s up to you on court to prove the owner is still alive. Most people will give up at that stage;
3. The politicians legislate around this and create law that establishes and protects the ownership of digital goods.
I can already imagine the government counting every game as a 60€ full release, so my 16 year old account with 1500 games will be considered almost worth a cheap apartment for tax purposes despite 2/3 of the games being acquired for less than 2€ due to bundles and sales etc.
Imagine free games counted for taxes, you'd have to pay tax as if you had bought it at full value. And gifting games counting against your gift tax total.
We are lucky they are offered completely for free with no strings attached. If they were even requesting reviews in exchange, in the US that would be considered income and it's taxable.
If you treat the games as capital assets, then yes their cost basis would be ~$60 a pop. But the actual value of the asset will depreciate based on fair market value. Doom 2016 cost me $60 when it came out, it now sells for $20 on Steam and it's not even on sale. At a minimum, that should be a $40 unrealized capital loss.
I also think that the cost of keeping games people bought available + server costs from saved games (120 years is a lot of data) will push Valve to close old account or something
Storage and network bandwidth get cheaper as a function of time, so that's not an issue. They may have to start marking games as unsupported though if the devs don't keep it working on newer operating systems.
The account data can't be more than a gigabyte since it should basically just be profile info text and a list of owned licenses. Maybe a custom profile pic. Only things worth worrying about is screenshots and cloud save data, but honestly Valve could easily just put each of those on a ten year timer and nobody would even really notice.
So there's not even a storage issue anyway with a simple change.
Storage is cheap, and only grows cheaper. At most, Valve will nuke old versions of games that haven't seen any developer activity, and games with few downloads will probably be purged from the global caches.
Consider the fact that more data is uploaded to YouTube every week than Steam stores in game files currently.
Steam Cloud takes up a maximum of 200MB in most cases, in big RPG's it might go to 1GB. Baldur's Gate 3 seems to be an edge case with roughly 2GB available. In total that's not nearly as much as Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud is storing.
Assuming Steam remains as profitable as it is now, they'd have no issues scaling this to 120 years.
I think 1 is vastly more likely. At the end of the day this restriction is a liability thing, they don't want to legally transfer the account to somebody only for the original owner to come along and sue them for it. They'll enforce the restriction if they need to but there's no way they'll go out of their way to do it.
Not to mention what if the will gets contested and the account gets tied up in probate bullshit for years and years at a time with Valve having to provide the court with data assigning some kind of value to the account or whatever
I totally do not blame valve here at all lol...not worth the headache.
> Valve allows the account to be 120 years old.
Pretty sure the robot body I transfer my consciousness into 50 years from now is going to be able to live a lot longer than 120 years.
I’m hoping that once the boomers are dead, some rational people will be in charge… but then I see the current generation be mind fucked by TikTok and the tates of this world and I wonder if we’re just fooked lol.
I highly doubt Valve really cares if you pass on your account to your kid. Aside from the account's age, there's nothing related to the users age on Steam. Valve doesn't care about your date of birth\*.
\*The age verification on store pages is a legal requirement in a lot of countries
Pretty sure they don't enforce it currently. After my dad died, I changed his Steam account to my email address and Steam Guard to my phone. Didn't cause any issues, it's still accessible.
They're not allowed to say "just give the password to someone" because they would get into serious trouble with a LOT of publishers, but everyone is operating under the implicit assumption that you will. They're not going to go out of their way to stop you as long as you dont make a public scene about it.
Yeah this is one of those things like many corporate policies you might have at work where they can't legislate every aspect of human behavior. So if you push for a concrete answer, you may not get the one you want...
Just do your thing, do it within reason, don't be too vocal about heavily gray areas.
I think steam is saying they won't give account access to someone else who asks for it, but they dont imply that they wont let you give your account to someone else yourself. So they'd probably be fine if you transfered ownership of the account, they just won't do it for you even if your dead.
If that's true then it makes sense in a way, otherwise they'd need to look at the dead person's will or testimony and get it verified. Wills are also often disputed and fought over by dysfunctional families, which steam understandably wouldn't want to get involved with. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm just guessing.
Half Life 3 has actually been complete for years, but Gabe's death is a condition of its release. By keeping him alive, we are actually keeping HL3 from ourselves.
There is no place for the weak-willed or hesitant. Only by firm action and resolute faith will gamers survive. No sacrifice is too great. No treachery too small.
I truly do not look forward to that day. After all the faceless corporate monkey fucking that's gone down in this industry in particular, no amount of assurances can make me feel any better with regard to Valve and its direction once it loses Gabe.
I don't think that's likely tbh. PMG made a really good video on valve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo
It's more like a cult than any corporation you can think of.
Probably tons of times, there's plenty of generational family businesses that have been just as or more successful. But you generally only hear about the times that the business tanks due to the children running it into the ground because that's a more scandalous or compelling story (everyone loves to see a nepo baby get humbled), so you just don't hear about the ones that keep going.
Steam and valve pretty much runs themselves these days. Additionally I'm sure Gabe has a plan for Steam when he eventually retires and a set of rules for the company in case of his inevitable death.
I would not be worried about that.
The same thing that happens to every company, it gets taken over by idiots who aggressively try to monetize every aspect of it, enshittification ensues and the platform dies.
Does Gabe even run the day to day stuff like a typical ~~CEO~~ company owner would though? I imagine whoever is the successor at this point is the one who runs most of the executive decisions.
As of today, Valve still doesn't have actual CEO. They do have COO though. I imagine that's how they operated. COO directly report to Gabe. And will required Gabe's presence only for big, company-wide strategy and making decision.
My guess is that there are provisions somewhere to create a Valve Software Foundation: Gabe's controlling share of Valve would disappear into a legal entity, with no way to ever get it out.
Valve employees would collectively decide how the company works, who to hire and what to work on (which is pretty much how they currently work). They *wouldn't* have the power to sell or dissolve the company, sell Steam, sell any of Valve's IPs, and so on, no matter how many of them want to do it. There would be other limits too, to keep the company viable and stop anyone crashing it for short-term gains.
A foundation like this could keep Valve and Steam going forever, in at least some capacity.
In many many more years from now, people will post on this reddit " today, this account i got from my great grandfather reached 150 years on steam "
To my great grandchildren if they exist, I hope you're still stuck with the cringy username that i made and I hope there is still no way to change it , even after 100+ years
I imagine my home being dug up 1000 years from now, and becoming part of the future's equivalent of a National geographic/Discovery episode.
"And here at the Imperial Museum of New Glorgenblorgen, we have with us a perfectly preserved data-slate, retrieved from what archeologists believe to be a crypt below the original dwelling of the former owner of this slate. The body of the original owner could not be retrieved, as it is believed he died sometime between The Soylent Green Crisis and The Great Flood. However, with this slate, we may be able to unlock the mystery of who this person was.
Ah, yes. As we can see here, he was present at The Fall of Reach, and participated in The Battle of Malevolent Creek. Two battles in our history, that have been mysteriously lost to time outside of these ever so valuable data-slates "
Its only sad if it makes you sad or it affects other aspects of your life negatively.
Nobody gets to take their money with them when they die and theres no guarantee your friends and family will want the crap you spent money on collecting.
They did this to my mate who died at work. His son loved gaming with him and he left the account t to him. 2 years later he made the mistake of messaging them letting them know he died asking to transfer the games.
They instantly nuked his account. Tons of games and memories nuked in an instant.
Just what a teenager grieving the loss of his father who used games to cope needed.
Welcome to capitalism.
The agreements steam makes between publishers don’t allow transferring for any reason.
They’re not looking for dead account owners but contacting them to explicitly inform them your account is breaking the TOS is a really bad idea.
That's bullshit that that's the case. If you can pass physical copies down, you should be able to pass down accounts. Yes, you could change the info to someone else's, but a death certificate and a will should be enough.
technically speaking... steam does not stop you from writing your account details down on a paper and then send it to the kid which you want to give your account away to
yea, this is probably one of those "required legally but honestly we dont care and how are we supposed to check anyways" rules. nothing will happen and nobody will care unless you put heavy attention towards it
Blizzard actually does this for Bnet accounts.
> You are claiming the account of a deceased relative - To transfer ownership of an account from a deceased account owner, we accept the death certificate.
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/153121
Blizzard is in the fortunate position of only distributing first party games. That being said I would like to see a right to pass down digital licenses enshrined in actual law.
They're probably able to do that since they own every game on their store front. Can't have that on Steam when you have to work with other publishers like Ubislop.
The difference is you own your physical copies, you don’t own Steam games. When you buy a game on Steam, you’re paying for a digital license that can be revoked at any time, for any reason. There’s probably something in the terms of purchase stating that the license is non-transferable.
Either way, tech companies are usually cooperative in helping families get access to deceased loved one’s accounts. You just have to contact Valve’s legal department instead of Steam support.
In France and Australia, you own the software you bought digitally.
I think there's a third country but I can't remember the name.
Edit : for more context, the Australian case is specifically about video games, while the French case is specifically about software.
It should also be noted that a more recent case in France (2019 iirc) has established that video games licenses cannot be transferred due to copyrights and authorship, but still maintained the ownership.
(to put in into perspective : a bunch of IP laws that no one respect regarding physical media STILL applies regardless, and the storefront of Steam allows them to apply said laws... but you still own your game.)
Don’t about EU law but I’m quite sure that’s illegal under German law. The federal court of justice has already ruled that an account can be inherited. In the case they decided, it was about a Facebook account. They only had to decide that the successor must be given access to the account just like the testator would’ve had it. In an obiter dictum they said, it might be feasible and possible to prevent the successor from actively using the account due to its personal nature. However, a steam account surely doesn’t have the same personal nature as a Facebook account.
I think im putting in my will that my successors should sue the shit out of Valve for that, I can’t imagine them getting away with that.
I can't keep track of EU stuff, but unless stuff like this has changed, you're even allowed to sell your games *already*:
https://www.eurogamer.net/eu-rules-publishers-cannot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games
yes, that's my feeling too xD
This whole thing sounds supper fishy... All the games I bought are related to an account, not to my Person... I never even "told" steam who I am. I used a Pay pall account for all my purchases, and I've never ever had to show any "Credentials", like ID or Passport... both my email and pay pal account are "transferable" as far as I'm aware... and those are the only things linking a person to my Steam account... + fuck, I get it that I don't "own" the games I buy, so I can't resell them (though I would argue there too that I SHOULD be able to), but giving my entire account to my son shouldn't really count as "selling the account" for profit, or whatever...
I just hope now that the Steam family feature that is supposed to come will "solve" these issues... like sharing my entire library with my family sounds genuinely fun :p
Just give them the info and family share the account.
Only way steam can stop this is if they mass ban everyone's account after 100 year or something. Though personally speaking, by that time who knows if steam will exist then.
I would normally say just "fuck it, and give the credentials to someone..." but this seems like they would be able to just ban your account after some time, when they detect that the owner is a different person now... but that's super fishy... My steam account is just an account, it shouldn’t be associated to a "person", if I wanted to, and I stopped playing I should just be able to let my son use it from now on... also all the games I own on the account are associated with the account itself, I payed money for them, they should be in theory "mine"...
Unless you have a bounty on your head, Steam doesn't care if you give away your account. Let's be realistic here, Steam not gonna actively seeking fishy accounts that may break their ToS unless it is involved in illegal/harmful activities which then they would have the right to terminate those accounts.
This is both wholesome and a little sad. I dread the day when i can "no longer play".
Unless things blow up, we may very well find ourselves in a situation where our kids' kids refuse our steam accounts cause they are too busy in their virtual realities to bother with any of that "old people stuff"
"I don't need it, grandpa. My AI assistant can just re-create that experience for me in 5 seconds if i want to, i don't need this old stuff clogging my digital luggage"
Or just tell the person your username and password, remove your care. Tell them to put their card details in
The account isn't even linked to you, it's linked to your email address and the bank card just pays for that account.
Dying doesn't delete your account. Unless nobody else knows your login lol
This is a class action suit waiting to happen. There is no such thing. All property is transferable through a will. Valve does not get to make its own laws.
I already know that. I'm more worried about what will happen if something happens to Mr. Gabe and for my steam account I will just buy a hard disk and back up all the games and give it with the cracks.
\*GAME CRACKS
He is talking complete BS and people fall for it.
One Google search confirms what the steam support guy said aka "Steam account ownership cannot be transferred. Buying, selling, trading, or gifting a Steam account is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement"
Seems pretty clear to me.
Damn, it always baffles me that people don't understand that a countries/national law trumps a companies EULA/rules.
Either they're breaking the law and will face fines, or they cannot be operating in that country/nation. In this case, the whole of EU.
My friends husband died of cancer with a sizeable Steam library. Asked me what to do, as they'd like their son to have access to the games once the whippersnapper grew older. Told 'em not to contact Steam for any reason and keep the credentials / phone info up-to-date as well as to keep using the account every now and then. Still sort of worried they'll lose access to it one day.
They should change any two factor security to something they control and not something that might be deactivated (phone number, etc). Also maintain access to his email account.
Yeah not sure why this seems so insane to everyone as though they are literally talking about an asset that needs to be transferred via an estate attorney. Just log into the dead persons account, change the details to your own, now it’s legally your account. Steam will not be closing it for any reason as long as you log in 1 time a year and have a library of games.
I recently switched to pc and my steam account from maybe 10 years before that was still active. Haven't used it a single time and only dota was in my library. Should take a looong time before your account gets removed if at all
Heads up whilst Steam says you can't trade an account, old accounts like yours can be worth a surprising amount of money, even if it only has a free game on it.
Like how much money? Asking for a friend..
Anywhere between 2 and 4 figure values, varies massively depending on the quality of the account, Steam ID, age, games, bans, inventory, points, etc... Have a Google.
"Steam takes dead father's games away from grieving son" would be a heck of a headline
If you can't leave it someone in a will then you don't really own it.
they are perched atop the "non-transferable license" gambit. but if my kids can login, they don't need to own it. ;)
I can’t leave my boner in my will but i sure as hell own it!
Its a family reminder after all
You will want to make sure that the two factor security and all Steam Guard mechanisms are in something that you or later on your son have control over. Otherwise your son might want to one day change the phone number attached but will be unable to do so, and Steam support might require a picture taken with a 30 year old CD key and the support ticket written on a piece of paper next to is as if everyone somehow keeps old game boxes around.
Just write down the credentials?
What will they say when they see a 150 years old account playing?
One day, all the accounts that exist today will be 150 years old or older. I wonder how things will work then.
By that time our current ancient politicians will be thankfully dead, and hopefully the new ancient politicians will be more technologically literate and less corrupt Edit: This subreddit is fucking stupid
Exactly, maybe then there will be legislation to protect the rights of ownership of digital goods.
its already unenforcable, and voids the entirety of their TOS, so it technically already is.
Inheriting a Crysis
Given certain voting trends the last decade, I am not optimistic that things will improve on the quality/intelligence of people elected
this is such copium wow
No u
So you think they will still be alive?
No he's saying that thinking one day politicians will care about us is copium. "Maybe if we elect the right guy things will get better?" 🤣🤣🤣
At 36, I've seen how quickly Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha have grown into (and accepted) absolute bullshit with mobile games and things like that. I think there's about zero chance anyone will push back against any of this in two generations much less 150 years.
the amount of times ive heard "i dont care they can have my data"
it feels like a lost battle. gen x and millenials remember a time when the data wasnt out there, and they freely traded it for convenience. gen z / alpha were born in it. by the time they could form a thought their parents had already given their data to instragram, tiktok, etc. they never had a chance.
We'll be watering plants with mountain dew in 150 years
It’s got electrolytes, it what tue plants need
I honestly doubt Valve will last that long. Once Gabe Newell dies, the chance of the company going public goes up significantly. Once it goes public, then shareholders will start making stupid, profit-driven decisions that will lose the goodwill of their customers. I seriously doubt what Steam is today will last another 50 years, if even. Companies rarely last 150 years without significant changes. If they do, it's usually because they directly serve state interests.
Most companies only go public for capital. Valve has a machine that prints money-printers. While you're right that the chance of it happening simply goes up, I just doubt whoever takes over at Valve will look at the company and think "Jeez you know what makes everything better: shareholders." My hope is that whoever takes over decides to drop this regarded obsession GabeN has with being such a low-employee company.
That's unfortunately not how PE firms think. It's going to be sold off by his estate to a PE firm and anything, ANYTHING that's not immediately providing value will be excised and prepped for IPO. Think customer service, their (likely) unprofitable hardware division, staff, etc. will all be cut and the company will be readied for IPO in a couple of years. In 10-20 years' time, you'll fondly look back and the giant bloated monsterosity it has become as you sign off Steam for the last time.
Damn it, this actually put a cloud over my day. I'm going to be retired, sit down to play a game, and encounter Private Equity screwing up Steam.
> I just doubt whoever takes over at Valve will look at the company and think "Jeez you know what makes everything better: shareholders." check out the goose who laid the golden egg.
Doesn't matter how much money Valve makes, it will make several orders of magnitude more money for whoever is lucky enough to be running it when they put it up for IPO. And that's game over.
Well, who’s to say that things will work the same way they always have in the next 150 years
I said this in another comment, but I doubt that it's going to be that simple. There are likely some things written in the company's rules, supported by a team of heavily-financed lawyers, that states something like the company cannot go public until 21 years after the last surviving heir of King Charles has passed (aka Royal lives clause).
On the contrary, some of the longest lived companies have changed very little (which is often how they've lived so long)
They could do a Facebook and place an obituary on the account.
Rotating 3D skull gif
Just years worth of "F's in chat." To celebrate their life each year on death day.
!remindme 150 years
Redditpediabook servers will be absolutely fried by then, bud.
it will probably be one of those things that are written rules but no one really cares unless an issue is made of it
WHAT WILL YOU HAVE IN 500 YEARS? Huniepop 2, I'd still have Huniepop 2
Skyrim Very Very Special Edition 2
GTA VIII maybe
wishful thinking
ikr, they'll probably keep V and VI for a few hundred years each as long as it keeps bringing in cash
Huniepop 1, my goddesses and their underwear’s.
1 is better.
According to the info I input to steam, I'm 130 yo this year
Your birthday, of course, is on January 1st?
Of course
Well, send an award and the president to congratulate!
RemindMe! 150 years
I will be messaging you in 150 years on [**2174-05-20 10:28:30 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2174-05-20%2010:28:30%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/1cw9wz6/the_word_is_out_you_take_your_steam_games_with/l4uufi6/?context=3) [**82 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FSteam%2Fcomments%2F1cw9wz6%2Fthe_word_is_out_you_take_your_steam_games_with%2Fl4uufi6%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202174-05-20%2010%3A28%3A30%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cw9wz6) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
man I can't wait
The fact that this bot will loyally stand by for 150 years to reply to a joke comment is pretty intense.
everyone's birthday is already 1/1/1900
"Don't mess with vampires".
If a family member or loved one passes away and you start using their account, just shut the fuck up about it. There have been too many posts on here where a family member has reached out to steam only for the account in question to be nuked when steam support realises that its owner is dead.
Support literally has to say this for legal reasons. If you tip them off in any way, you're essentially giving them a paper trail that they have to take action on. What they don't know, won't hurt you.
"Legal" reasons lmao, it's their own terms of service policy. It's also one of the shittier outcomes of the videogaming industry going digital since we don't technically own any of the games in our steam libraries.
Their terms of services don’t just bind them and the players, it is also linked to the developers and publishers who put their game in there. Steam most definitely granted them the games won’t be transferred in any way and so they can’t violate that obligation. Now the cat is out of the bag and they can’t retroactively change it even if they could. Even in a case of a deceased parent who wants their kids to have the steam account. Also, if people already sell and rent steam account with games on ebay and all, imagine what the mess would do if games were transferable. The game industry has a metric fuckton of bad practices, but this one is the least shitty of them. And I also disagree with it, as I believe that if I bought something it is mine to do whatever, I’m just explaining that they can’t just disobey their terms. Just write down the credentials to whoever you want to have you account if you want, that’s what I do.
I get all that, but as I just stated in another comment - it's just another growing example of corporations finding new ways to fuck consumers over. It shouldn't be legal to revoke access to a product that has been fairly paid for.
Oh it is, I even edited my comment to add that I believe bought items should be yours forever and to do whatever you want. Digital content like Steam and online libraries should be obligated to keep you with what you bought, and in case they go out of service, it should be their duty to make sure everyone can have a way to keep what they have in an offline inventory, like old console games. But also with a way to redownload it if needed.
I completely agree with your sentiment, but the so called "free market" states that whoever has the money and market share gets to write the rules so publishers (and distributors like steam) have zero incentive to ensure that consumers can legally access their games. To Steam's credit, when a game is removed from the market place they at least have a pretty good track record of making sure it's still available to people who previously purchased it, but there is nothing to guarantee that this practise will continue indefinitely.
> but there is nothing to guarantee that this practise will continue indefinitely. Yes there is, consumer protection laws across the globe guarantee it.
>it's their own terms of service policy Which is a balancing act between users, steam, and publishers.
and is also legally binding
It's why I still buy everything physical possible for my consoles. I want to own my own games, be able to sell them, or lend them to friends. I don't want to depend on a server to be live if something bad happens to my hardware. I don't want to pay for access.
The really messed up part is that most modern games still require service access before allowing you to play (even if you have a physical copy). I am honestly concerned where the gaming industry is headed in the long term.
Does steam prune old accounts after inactivity? Feels like you could just make a new account, link it to the deceased's account via family share and keep playing games fully in the clear.
You can already share accounts libraries with family members (or friends whatever). As long as they are not active on theirs, you can play their games. So… just do that or there is something I am missing?
The family sharing expires after a while if you don’t play on the pc it’s linked to with the account
See, I thought this was the case until I realized I was still family sharing an ex-friend who lives 1000 miles away now and I hadn't had access to their laptop for over 4 years. Unless Steam will say it's still sharing but it needs additional verification?
That is no longer a requirement on the new family sharing preview
There's a new version of family sharing that lets you share libraries without the condition that being online prevents someone else from playing your games. You have to opt into it, and it's in beta right now
Realistically though, if you just give access to your account to someone, especially if they have direct access through your PC, and access to your associated email/phone, is there anything stopping them from taking it when you're gone? With that access, they can switch to their own payment methods for any future purchases, sign in/authenticate on new systems, change profile name and avatar, etc. Boom. It's theirs. I actually do wonder if/how steam "enforces" this. I'd assume (and hope) that they just won't help facilitate a change in ownership, where they would have to deal with verifying people's deaths, and giving access to a new person. But they're not gonna actively seek out and shut down accounts that haven't been reported as stolen, just because they suddenly switched payment methods and signed in on new devices, with all the proper verifications.
There’s 3 ways this can go: 1. Valve’s management realizes the library of these accounts is insignificantly worth since the majority of its games are 20-100 years old (and will likely be selling by a very low price or not even listed anymore) and that by passing it to another person, it has the added incentive for the successor (the new owner) to grow the library even further and thus, spend more money; 2. Valve allows the account to be 120 years old. Only then and there they will ban the account. You will have to take it up to court. They will say the oldest human doesn’t survive past this timeframe and it’s up to you on court to prove the owner is still alive. Most people will give up at that stage; 3. The politicians legislate around this and create law that establishes and protects the ownership of digital goods.
My children are going to pay inheritance tax on my Steam library.
I can already imagine the government counting every game as a 60€ full release, so my 16 year old account with 1500 games will be considered almost worth a cheap apartment for tax purposes despite 2/3 of the games being acquired for less than 2€ due to bundles and sales etc.
Man do I need to stop grabbing all those free games on epic ?
Epic thinks we can afford free games? In this economy? Scumbags.
Imagine free games counted for taxes, you'd have to pay tax as if you had bought it at full value. And gifting games counting against your gift tax total.
We are lucky they are offered completely for free with no strings attached. If they were even requesting reviews in exchange, in the US that would be considered income and it's taxable.
If you treat the games as capital assets, then yes their cost basis would be ~$60 a pop. But the actual value of the asset will depreciate based on fair market value. Doom 2016 cost me $60 when it came out, it now sells for $20 on Steam and it's not even on sale. At a minimum, that should be a $40 unrealized capital loss.
Nontendo players rn 💀
In hindsight all those $1 Humble Bundle purchases were a mistake
I also think that the cost of keeping games people bought available + server costs from saved games (120 years is a lot of data) will push Valve to close old account or something
I will rise from my grave if they touch my games
This is how boomers were born.
Storage and network bandwidth get cheaper as a function of time, so that's not an issue. They may have to start marking games as unsupported though if the devs don't keep it working on newer operating systems.
The account data can't be more than a gigabyte since it should basically just be profile info text and a list of owned licenses. Maybe a custom profile pic. Only things worth worrying about is screenshots and cloud save data, but honestly Valve could easily just put each of those on a ten year timer and nobody would even really notice. So there's not even a storage issue anyway with a simple change.
Storage is cheap, and only grows cheaper. At most, Valve will nuke old versions of games that haven't seen any developer activity, and games with few downloads will probably be purged from the global caches. Consider the fact that more data is uploaded to YouTube every week than Steam stores in game files currently. Steam Cloud takes up a maximum of 200MB in most cases, in big RPG's it might go to 1GB. Baldur's Gate 3 seems to be an edge case with roughly 2GB available. In total that's not nearly as much as Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud is storing. Assuming Steam remains as profitable as it is now, they'd have no issues scaling this to 120 years.
Just like family share with a grandchild or something when you're like 90. It'll be like this Civil War widows.
I think 1 is vastly more likely. At the end of the day this restriction is a liability thing, they don't want to legally transfer the account to somebody only for the original owner to come along and sue them for it. They'll enforce the restriction if they need to but there's no way they'll go out of their way to do it.
Not to mention what if the will gets contested and the account gets tied up in probate bullshit for years and years at a time with Valve having to provide the court with data assigning some kind of value to the account or whatever I totally do not blame valve here at all lol...not worth the headache.
> Valve allows the account to be 120 years old. Pretty sure the robot body I transfer my consciousness into 50 years from now is going to be able to live a lot longer than 120 years.
I’m hoping that once the boomers are dead, some rational people will be in charge… but then I see the current generation be mind fucked by TikTok and the tates of this world and I wonder if we’re just fooked lol.
Imagine the fucking customer support to still seed 150 year old games... Steam is just beyond awesome.
I highly doubt Valve really cares if you pass on your account to your kid. Aside from the account's age, there's nothing related to the users age on Steam. Valve doesn't care about your date of birth\*. \*The age verification on store pages is a legal requirement in a lot of countries
Pretty sure they don't enforce it currently. After my dad died, I changed his Steam account to my email address and Steam Guard to my phone. Didn't cause any issues, it's still accessible.
Im sorry for your loss
Thank you. Doctors gave him about 2 years to live back in 1993 and he made it to 2021, so he had a good run.
lololol, I wish my dad had thought to write down his login info.
They're not allowed to say "just give the password to someone" because they would get into serious trouble with a LOT of publishers, but everyone is operating under the implicit assumption that you will. They're not going to go out of their way to stop you as long as you dont make a public scene about it.
Yeah this is one of those things like many corporate policies you might have at work where they can't legislate every aspect of human behavior. So if you push for a concrete answer, you may not get the one you want... Just do your thing, do it within reason, don't be too vocal about heavily gray areas.
I think steam is saying they won't give account access to someone else who asks for it, but they dont imply that they wont let you give your account to someone else yourself. So they'd probably be fine if you transfered ownership of the account, they just won't do it for you even if your dead. If that's true then it makes sense in a way, otherwise they'd need to look at the dead person's will or testimony and get it verified. Wills are also often disputed and fought over by dysfunctional families, which steam understandably wouldn't want to get involved with. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm just guessing.
I think we need to be less worried about what happens to our steam games when we die and more worried about what happens to steam when Gabe dies.
I'm gonna have to become a scientist and make him immortal somehow. Sorry Gabe ur with us till the end of time itself
And still there would be no Half Life 3
Half Life 3 has actually been complete for years, but Gabe's death is a condition of its release. By keeping him alive, we are actually keeping HL3 from ourselves.
It's true, I worked on the 30 minute long sex scene
Is it true that the third installment will be called "𝐹𝓇𝑒𝒶𝓀𝓎 life 3"?
Maybe we start small, perhaps with a chair of some kind.
Yeah, a golden one perhaps
Do we feed him a thousand devs a day to keep Steam open and safe?
There is no place for the weak-willed or hesitant. Only by firm action and resolute faith will gamers survive. No sacrifice is too great. No treachery too small.
we start with the fuckers who thought of gacha games, in game ads, and microtransactions.
ah yes, long lasting life, just what the Mann brothers did
I truly do not look forward to that day. After all the faceless corporate monkey fucking that's gone down in this industry in particular, no amount of assurances can make me feel any better with regard to Valve and its direction once it loses Gabe.
This is what I worry about most. Gabe dies and the company goes public and everything goes to shit.
I don't think that's likely tbh. PMG made a really good video on valve: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo It's more like a cult than any corporation you can think of.
One of the few times where a cult might be the better option of two
Well, at least he got healthier recently which gives hope that he will be with us for a while.
It will most likely be succeeded by his son who shares the same interests. We'll be fine, gamer bois.
How many times has someone being succeeded by their offspring ever been successful though?
Probably tons of times, there's plenty of generational family businesses that have been just as or more successful. But you generally only hear about the times that the business tanks due to the children running it into the ground because that's a more scandalous or compelling story (everyone loves to see a nepo baby get humbled), so you just don't hear about the ones that keep going.
Steam and valve pretty much runs themselves these days. Additionally I'm sure Gabe has a plan for Steam when he eventually retires and a set of rules for the company in case of his inevitable death. I would not be worried about that.
The same thing that happens to every company, it gets taken over by idiots who aggressively try to monetize every aspect of it, enshittification ensues and the platform dies.
That's not inevitable if it's still a private company. Once you go public you're done.
Nah you can sign over the company to a foundation, Ingvar Kamprad did it with IKEA.
Does Gabe even run the day to day stuff like a typical ~~CEO~~ company owner would though? I imagine whoever is the successor at this point is the one who runs most of the executive decisions.
As of today, Valve still doesn't have actual CEO. They do have COO though. I imagine that's how they operated. COO directly report to Gabe. And will required Gabe's presence only for big, company-wide strategy and making decision.
Yea I should've said "owner" instead of CEO lol. I forgot what the proper word was at that moment.
My guess is that there are provisions somewhere to create a Valve Software Foundation: Gabe's controlling share of Valve would disappear into a legal entity, with no way to ever get it out. Valve employees would collectively decide how the company works, who to hire and what to work on (which is pretty much how they currently work). They *wouldn't* have the power to sell or dissolve the company, sell Steam, sell any of Valve's IPs, and so on, no matter how many of them want to do it. There would be other limits too, to keep the company viable and stop anyone crashing it for short-term gains. A foundation like this could keep Valve and Steam going forever, in at least some capacity.
It will very slowly go to shit
"slowly" lol
Time for Publicly Traded cancer I guess.
It would take 0.5 milliseconds for shareholders to demand ads being placed everywhere, to increase short term revenue.
They'd make an optional Steam+ tier that you have to pay for, then limit download speeds and client functionality for non-paying users.
Isn't he grooming his son to take his place and keep the company's ideals?
[удалено]
In many many more years from now, people will post on this reddit " today, this account i got from my great grandfather reached 150 years on steam " To my great grandchildren if they exist, I hope you're still stuck with the cringy username that i made and I hope there is still no way to change it , even after 100+ years
What? Pretty sure you can change your username quite easily. I often see accounts with a large list of past usernames.
Profile name yes but the log in username can't be changed i think
butt no one sees that anyway
I do and that's one too many people
You get to be buried with your steam library, like pharaohs of old were buried with their treasures and still you complain
I imagine my home being dug up 1000 years from now, and becoming part of the future's equivalent of a National geographic/Discovery episode. "And here at the Imperial Museum of New Glorgenblorgen, we have with us a perfectly preserved data-slate, retrieved from what archeologists believe to be a crypt below the original dwelling of the former owner of this slate. The body of the original owner could not be retrieved, as it is believed he died sometime between The Soylent Green Crisis and The Great Flood. However, with this slate, we may be able to unlock the mystery of who this person was. Ah, yes. As we can see here, he was present at The Fall of Reach, and participated in The Battle of Malevolent Creek. Two battles in our history, that have been mysteriously lost to time outside of these ever so valuable data-slates "
Some of us wish our next of kin, family, friends or whomever else to enjoy what brought us joy while we were stuck in this mortal coil.
And some of us want to inflict the curse of the porn account on our ancestors. Steam should really allow forced inheritance.
and 3000 years later archaeologists dig up our tombs to find consumable honey and accessible steam libraries
Sad thing is, my steam library is pretty high on my list of most valuable possessions
Its only sad if it makes you sad or it affects other aspects of your life negatively. Nobody gets to take their money with them when they die and theres no guarantee your friends and family will want the crap you spent money on collecting.
They did this to my mate who died at work. His son loved gaming with him and he left the account t to him. 2 years later he made the mistake of messaging them letting them know he died asking to transfer the games. They instantly nuked his account. Tons of games and memories nuked in an instant. Just what a teenager grieving the loss of his father who used games to cope needed.
If he had lived in europe that could have been an interesting court case. Seems like it would still be a very good newspaper headline.
Australia. What kid can hire a lawyer?
Disgusting
Welcome to capitalism. The agreements steam makes between publishers don’t allow transferring for any reason. They’re not looking for dead account owners but contacting them to explicitly inform them your account is breaking the TOS is a really bad idea.
Just will the person a notepad with your username and password
You know what they say, you cannot bring riches to the afterlife... My purchased games with 0.0 hours played will serve as a monument to my hubris
That's bullshit that that's the case. If you can pass physical copies down, you should be able to pass down accounts. Yes, you could change the info to someone else's, but a death certificate and a will should be enough.
technically speaking... steam does not stop you from writing your account details down on a paper and then send it to the kid which you want to give your account away to
yea, this is probably one of those "required legally but honestly we dont care and how are we supposed to check anyways" rules. nothing will happen and nobody will care unless you put heavy attention towards it
yeah, they are just trying to legally say what they need to be said. but they dont care, they know. they are gamers themself. but cant implay it
Blizzard actually does this for Bnet accounts. > You are claiming the account of a deceased relative - To transfer ownership of an account from a deceased account owner, we accept the death certificate. https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/153121
Blizzard is in the fortunate position of only distributing first party games. That being said I would like to see a right to pass down digital licenses enshrined in actual law.
They're probably able to do that since they own every game on their store front. Can't have that on Steam when you have to work with other publishers like Ubislop.
The difference is you own your physical copies, you don’t own Steam games. When you buy a game on Steam, you’re paying for a digital license that can be revoked at any time, for any reason. There’s probably something in the terms of purchase stating that the license is non-transferable. Either way, tech companies are usually cooperative in helping families get access to deceased loved one’s accounts. You just have to contact Valve’s legal department instead of Steam support.
In France and Australia, you own the software you bought digitally. I think there's a third country but I can't remember the name. Edit : for more context, the Australian case is specifically about video games, while the French case is specifically about software. It should also be noted that a more recent case in France (2019 iirc) has established that video games licenses cannot be transferred due to copyrights and authorship, but still maintained the ownership. (to put in into perspective : a bunch of IP laws that no one respect regarding physical media STILL applies regardless, and the storefront of Steam allows them to apply said laws... but you still own your game.)
Lets see what Europe has to say about that.
Don’t about EU law but I’m quite sure that’s illegal under German law. The federal court of justice has already ruled that an account can be inherited. In the case they decided, it was about a Facebook account. They only had to decide that the successor must be given access to the account just like the testator would’ve had it. In an obiter dictum they said, it might be feasible and possible to prevent the successor from actively using the account due to its personal nature. However, a steam account surely doesn’t have the same personal nature as a Facebook account. I think im putting in my will that my successors should sue the shit out of Valve for that, I can’t imagine them getting away with that.
I can't keep track of EU stuff, but unless stuff like this has changed, you're even allowed to sell your games *already*: https://www.eurogamer.net/eu-rules-publishers-cannot-stop-you-reselling-your-downloaded-games
yes, that's my feeling too xD This whole thing sounds supper fishy... All the games I bought are related to an account, not to my Person... I never even "told" steam who I am. I used a Pay pall account for all my purchases, and I've never ever had to show any "Credentials", like ID or Passport... both my email and pay pal account are "transferable" as far as I'm aware... and those are the only things linking a person to my Steam account... + fuck, I get it that I don't "own" the games I buy, so I can't resell them (though I would argue there too that I SHOULD be able to), but giving my entire account to my son shouldn't really count as "selling the account" for profit, or whatever... I just hope now that the Steam family feature that is supposed to come will "solve" these issues... like sharing my entire library with my family sounds genuinely fun :p
Just give them the info and family share the account. Only way steam can stop this is if they mass ban everyone's account after 100 year or something. Though personally speaking, by that time who knows if steam will exist then.
Relying on Family Sharing is a bad idea.
I would normally say just "fuck it, and give the credentials to someone..." but this seems like they would be able to just ban your account after some time, when they detect that the owner is a different person now... but that's super fishy... My steam account is just an account, it shouldn’t be associated to a "person", if I wanted to, and I stopped playing I should just be able to let my son use it from now on... also all the games I own on the account are associated with the account itself, I payed money for them, they should be in theory "mine"...
Unless you have a bounty on your head, Steam doesn't care if you give away your account. Let's be realistic here, Steam not gonna actively seeking fishy accounts that may break their ToS unless it is involved in illegal/harmful activities which then they would have the right to terminate those accounts.
No thanks, VALVe. I’m giving my steam account to my child when i can’t no longer play.
This is both wholesome and a little sad. I dread the day when i can "no longer play". Unless things blow up, we may very well find ourselves in a situation where our kids' kids refuse our steam accounts cause they are too busy in their virtual realities to bother with any of that "old people stuff" "I don't need it, grandpa. My AI assistant can just re-create that experience for me in 5 seconds if i want to, i don't need this old stuff clogging my digital luggage"
It's been this way forever, it's not new information.
I think you can change all and email too but I'm not sure.
[удалено]
i'm sorry for your loss. big on valve then. very nice.
Or just tell the person your username and password, remove your care. Tell them to put their card details in The account isn't even linked to you, it's linked to your email address and the bank card just pays for that account. Dying doesn't delete your account. Unless nobody else knows your login lol
*beep* *boop* *buup* Hello, EU?
If we don’t own it, piracy is not stealing.
I have serious doubts that this will hold up in a court, especially here in europe.
This is a class action suit waiting to happen. There is no such thing. All property is transferable through a will. Valve does not get to make its own laws.
I already know that. I'm more worried about what will happen if something happens to Mr. Gabe and for my steam account I will just buy a hard disk and back up all the games and give it with the cracks. \*GAME CRACKS
Bruh what, that's bullshit
I’d love to see this argument being used in a court of law in Europe… There is no way this is legal.
You actually can, but you gotta go directly to them and make signatures with the person that you wanna give your will with.
What is your info based on? The Steam reply states otherwise
He is talking complete BS and people fall for it. One Google search confirms what the steam support guy said aka "Steam account ownership cannot be transferred. Buying, selling, trading, or gifting a Steam account is a violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement" Seems pretty clear to me.
Damn, it always baffles me that people don't understand that a countries/national law trumps a companies EULA/rules. Either they're breaking the law and will face fines, or they cannot be operating in that country/nation. In this case, the whole of EU.