But what is stopping just leaving your username/password on a piece of paper and transferring Steam Guard? I feel like this is one of those things we didn't need a "confirm" on.
You’re joking, but a family friend had her uncle die some time ago, and they found his absolutely massive porn collection when they went to clean up his flat. Like, continuous collections from issue 1 to like 50+ (sometimes 100+) on some magazines, a bunch of films on 8mm (I think) with a matching projector, the works.
We actually ended up indexing the whole thing to try and sell the collection, but nothing came of it.
Man, the pre-corporatized internet was soo amazing. Just a bunch of nerds on the internet, making content for each other and being idiots. No one constantly trying to grift you or track you or monetize you. I imagine it was how early settlers to various regions felt, with the lack of government oversight and overall lawlessness, but not having massive corporations able to oppress and control everything so it was kinda worth it.
Went through this when my uncle died. He had entire bookshelves full of it. Dude had subscriptions starting from the early 70s up until he died in 97. Almost 30 years of multiple mags....
"Son, finish my Steam backlog. If you can..."
"Dad, why do you have so many games you haven't finished or even started playing?"
"Because...Steam Sale..." \*dies\*
Be fun for them for a hot minute. But would be like when I got my dads old atari and the games were just horrible for the most part. Pac-man is a crappier version than in the arcade, Pitfall, damn crocs always killing ya. Space invaders is ok. Then you get to ET and you throw the system at the wall and burn it. Also if the game can't be played on mobile a lot of kids are just gonna be skipping it, but they prob will just need to download some tools.
It would actually be kind of hilarious if you were 105 years old playing on steam and they put a pop up that you're account has been active for 90 years and asking if you're actually still alive.
I remember a game studio (I think it was Konami about the MGS2 demo) in the early 2000s bragging about how their latest demo was successful even in countries where the game would not be sold, "such as Afghanistan". Apparently it didn't occur to them that Afghanistan was just the first item in a list of countries.
Steam doesn't ask you for your date of birth on account creation, just that you confirm you're older than 13.
They don't actually tie the date of birth you enter on the store to your account, which is why you get asked repeatedly instead of a one off.
You actually get asked repeatedly because that's what the law in the USA requires. They're not asking if the account holder is old enough. They're asking if the person sitting in front of the keyboard right now is old enough.
It's wild how people just assume that Valve didn't think of such a simple solution...and even wilder how they assume Valve is such a good guy and "oh they're just saying it because that's what they gotta say but they would *never* do anything that I don't like!"
Given that you can pick early 20th century as your birth date, it's questionable if Valve would care. But by the time we get to accounts being active for almost a century who knows what will happen to Valve and if there will be Valve.
I know you’re right, but you shouldnt be. We **really** need some international lawmakers to come online soon and sort out laws around ownership of digital media.. cause, you know, of **course** I own my steam account and all the games on it. And **of Course** I should be able to *will* that away..
BUT that's the thing. You don't actually own the goes on your list you own the right to play that game. This has been done with software since windows 3.2
We don't own shit :( it's complete bs and one of the reasons they pushed to go away from physical cd's
That's why GOG has said that, if you buy a game from them, there's nothing stopping you from downloading it and burning it to a CD. They've also said that, in the unlikely case they go out of business, they're going to give as much notice as possible to give people time to download their game libraries, and will even try to help people who will have trouble with that.
If buying software isn't ownership then piracy isn't theft...
Edit to make those complaining about "licences" happy;
If buying a software licence isn't ownership then piracy isn't theft...
It doesn't matter the wording, a purchase is a purchase, goods exchanged hands (even if those hands and goods are purely digital), if the company wants the licence back then goods need to exchange hands again...
It literally isn’t.
I once went to a talk held by a copyright lawyer, who said the whole analogy of infringement to theft is BS at a basic level. Rather, he said, copyright infringement of digital works is much more similar to hopping over the turnstile at a subway station or riding a bus without a ticket.
It’s still illegal, but far less heinous than theft.
You are saying this like it’s a some law of the universe and just not a human made one. Valve could easily be forced to recognize you owning a digital copy and give you more agency over it.
I did this; wrote down all my passwords and usernames for my digital stuff and my husband knows where they are. I made it very clear (we're still young and don't have wills) that if anything happens to me that he's to give that username and password to whomever he feels will enjoy those games, cause i have over 450 games on my steam account and there's no way I'm letting those just go unused.
In the future valve could simply delete or freeze accounts it suspects have transferred owners. Imagine after an account hits like 80-90 years old, valve could just assume original owner is dead and it’s now an unauthorized account.
I can imagine myself on the phone.
I was in the middle of my 90th Anniversary Edition Skyrim run and just about to kill Alduin when my service got shut off? You better turn it back on before I have my great grandchildren bring me over to your offices and I beat you with my walker!
I can see Valve still being around as long as whoever takes over from Gaben when the time comes sticks to his strategy of "sit back, do nothing and let the competition shoot themselves in the foot".
So many businesses fail to learn the old adage of "if it ain't broke don't fix it", keep changing things for the sake of it and just make things worse.
Not doing things while your competition is innovating is also a good way to destroy your business. There is no one size fits all answer as to how a business should operate to survive.
Have you had this happen? I gave my brother my secondhand card/inventory grinder and he can use support no issues about things he bought. In what instance would they ask that? Or are you saying because of the age the account would flag? I think Steam wouldn't want to turn away money regardless of amount and if the account was able to be verified.
Ive only heard the horror stories. It is usually only if you need to do something that proves your the account owner such as a password reset or report a hacked account etc. Sometimes people lose access to the verification app, or lose access to the email linked, so they support asks for ID verification.
A single support agent answering a rare/strange question isn't the same to me as "Valve confirms". I'll hold of until Valve gives an official press statement about it.
I mean why would they though? As u/RetroSwamp said, there's no need to confirm this as it can be circumvented in practice. It's just one of those cases where the company really couldn't give a shit but the technicalities forbid it and changing your TOS for some silly edge cases is just waste of time and money.
You can circumvent it right now but if you get caught your account gets banned. That's the crux of the question. Everyone knows you can *do* it, it's what happens if you get caught doing it.
Right. While that may be true, my point was that I highly doubt Valve would care enough to start actually, properly, monitoring it. Unless someone admits to it publicly ofc, but then that's their own fault.
As an analogue you can think of a law that is usually unenforced.
Strange as it is though, we do live with the realistic possibility of someone with a large steam library of video games that they have paid for, who then dies and gave his account information to his next of kin. Like this isn't exactly a rare and impossible thing: everyone with a steam account will die one day.
That works as long as nobody sue valve.
And if I will die, there is a good reason to get the account, at least for all the items. And I‘m sure EU law stands over their TOS.
In the grand scheme of the ToS and what is relevant and happening on a regular basis, yes someone dying and passing on the account is a silly edge case
It's a silly edge case now. The generations that are currently old and dying don't generally have full Steam libraries. But fast forward 40-50 years and you suddenly have millions of accounts loaded with games being passed on to younger generations, and every one of them meaning lost money to Valve.
Edit: A lot of people keep bringing up the same points, but I already adressed this in my next comment so I'm not going to be replying to everyone separately
The reality for 99.9% of people is that this will be like your grandparents passing away and leaving you a box full of VHS movies.
You could argue that the film companies have lost out but in actuality the person was never going to re-buy the films anyway.
> and every one of them meaning lost money to Valve
That's totally unsubstantiated though. If Steam had been around 40 years agp and today you inherited Grandpa's account, you'd have... Tetris? Super Mario Bros? The OG Legend of Zelda? How much money are you really spending on those old games that would be "lost" because you inherited the account?
I seriously doubt many people will ever be in a scenario where inherting af amily member's account gives them a meaningful number od games they otherwise would have purchased. IMO it's only really an issue when black market reselling starts happening (e.g. you get Grandpa's account appraised and sell it to a site that resells it to someone who likes what's in its library).
> If Steam had been around 40 years agp and today you inherited Grandpa's account, you'd have... Tetris? Super Mario Bros?
If Grandpa died today I doubt he's currently playing tetris. And if he'd had the account for 40 years and been active on it I'm pretty sure he'd have accumulated at least a few games people today still value.
I see, you don't work in IT. No user actually reported the problem with their very own steam account. It only affects 1% of users per year.
It's a silly edge case. /s
My younger brother killed himself recently and I’d love to be able to access his Steam account and tell his (only, because of his social anxiety) friends what has happened.
It’s not a silly edge case to me.
Not just **a** support agent. They all reply the same. I made this question some time ago because we got curious with my friends about what would happen, I pulled up my phone, messaged Steam Support with the question and they said that it was not possible to transfer your account.
It says in the Steam Subscriber Agreement that accounts can't be transferred. This doesn't really need to be "Valve confirms", because the real question is if anyone has ever seen any reason to believe it doesn't work this way.
Yeah, this wasn't a Valve Lawyer weighing in, this was Tier 1 or 2 support responding to a question based on Steam's ToS. Enough jurisdictions have laws regarding "digital property" and the like that I don't feel like this is settled *at all*. Once someone takes Valve to court to claim inheritance or communal property rights to a Steam account, then we'll *start* to see what the actual legal situation is.
Yeah, they don't really care about that. Valve just doesn't want the liability/drama of giving away passwords over to someone else. Too much effort is needed to verify fakes/hacks to make the service worth it.
It's Back to feudal days to let my son inherit my account, but then his younger brother plans to kill him, his uncles too, and even my bastard also wants to kill him.
Everything is only illegal if you get caught.
Give your account to someone and say nothing to anyone. Does valve do an audit of accounts? How would they know your hand isn't on the kb&m as opposed to someone else's? Just pass on all viable information(user info, customer service info, wrc.), have them use steam gift cards, etc.
They're not asking the age of the account holder. They're asking the age of the person sitting at the keyboard. Because it's a legal requirement, not because they really care themselves.
They don't, they don't ask for ID or anything like that, the only information they get from your is from your payment method, even then, I used my mom's credit card originally, because I was a kid, then I switched to mine and they never asked me anything about it. People move all the time and you can even keep using the same store until you add a new payment method, so if you move from South America to Europe, you stay in your SA store until you add a new European credit card. I have friends that moved and kept using their original store for years.
Obviously if an account was active for over 100 years they would know that it's probably not the original owner using it anymore, but they wouldn't actually give enough of a fuck to close it. It's more of a case that they don't want to be spending resources in setting up a system for people to be asking for the password of inactive accounts, it would require them to actually start asking people for a lot more information.
Honestly though? I'm like 99% sure that the only reason they don't let you transfer your account after you die, is because currently? There's no real way to "attach" an account to an actual person.
Like there's no way to tie your steam account into your real life identity. When you make a Steam account, you don't need to put in any personal info whatsoever. There's no ID verification or anything like that. So, there's no way for Steam to even confirm in the first place, that this specific account belongs to this specific person.
Like let's say you die. And your hypothetical wife contacts Steam asking for the account to be transferred to her. How would Steam confirm that you were even the original owner of the account? They can't. They have zero information on the account holder's real identity. So, they can't just transfer your account after you die. Not unless they start storing personal information of every account holder, but that would be a massive privacy risk. Imagine having to upload a government ID just to make a Steam account, everyone would be against that. But that's what needs to happen in order for Steam to be able to confirm the identities of account holders and properly transfer them in the event of death.
Now obviously, you can just write down your login info on a piece of paper before you die. Steam can't really stop you from doing that.
Really. If I paid money to own a game, can I give that game to someone else? There is no difference between whether it is a digital or real CD, it is a product.
Why is this in the news cycle? This has been known for years and the work around has always been just leaving your username and password to someone else in your belongings.
"this steam account has been on my family for generations, some add new games, some people strive to complete all the games they can, some just enjoy it leisurely. Now is your turn."
Have used a family member's account (now deceased) for 10+ years and 100+ purchases with no incident.
Valve won't confirm this due to the legal implications and framework required to support a legal transfer of an account.
This isn't new. It applies to all digital libraries for all media on any platform.
That being said, there's nothing stopping you from leaving a note or message to someone with your account details. No corp would ever know.
Uh-huh. I have a Keepass file with every single account I have with all the needed information for my wife and two kids to access my accounts and use them. I have that KeePass file backed up on 2 cloud sites, an external SSD, and a thumb drive.
I have had my Steam account since 2003 so there is zero way I am letting that go to waste. My twin boys are currently 8yrs old and are now PC gamers like me so I absolutely want them to have my game accounts after I die.
You can bequeath cars, houses, boats, baseball card collections, records, books, TV's, toasters... But your license to borderlands is a sacred text incalculably valuable that must die with the body.
It can, just shut the fuck up about it.
I swear, I have no idea what it is with idiots and snitching on themselves. Just share the credentials and SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.
If a friend or loved one passed unexpectedly, the last thing I'm gonna worry about is a handful of free games.
Like Jesus fucking Christ, what a Reddit moment.
"The confirmation came from the Steam support staff" yeah the support staff aka customers service of any company isn't exactly the go to spot for inside info. I don't know why people make stories from some unreliable garbage source like this (I do actually, it's to gain hits). Some guy in a call center that is no where in the same country as the Valve headquarters is going to give you the inside scoop so stop this shit.
Have digital rights/ownership ever been challenged in court? Feels like as more time goes by and more people invest lots of money into their digital collections (whether games/music/movies/books) that this gets sorted out in the court system. Kind of feel like it’s all still new for people to be up in arms over ownership transfer upon death.
Just look at the difference in response to this and Sony asking people to log into a free account. Where simply switching regions was too dangerous because it was against TOS people are perfectly fine just sharing passwords for their large library of purchased games.
It’s crazy how much leeway people give Steam vs ANYONE else having the slightest hiccup instantly causing outrage.
I mean you can, Valve isn't going to track when each if their customers die and purge accounts, you can leave your login. What they're confirming you can't do is transfer the contents of the account to someone else.
They are able to, valve just doesn't want to be emailed a picture of a death certificate and facilitate a process of transfer ownership when you instead could just give your username and password to whoever wants it
Fortunately, Valve's Terms of Service are not law. What I do with my Steam account is my own business, and Valve would have to violate actual laws to determine the real user of the account.
This is why GOG storefront is superior..... Even though valve is better than Epic is regards to consumer friendly, nothing beats DRM free and unfortunately a lot of games have DRM on steam versions of games including steams own DRM
I've been thinking about this since I saw it mentioned the other day. First, my collection is worth a lot right now - but it won't be in 30 years. It might be a couple hundred bucks at best due to the games that will be cult classics, but most games will be purchased at a few dollars. Nobody else is going to have exactly the same interests as me, so most of the games tied to the account aren't going to get played once I'm gone. Then we come to support - can we really say in 2-3 more OS's all these games are still going to work? This is just the way it's going to go with computer games. Online services get closed, games stop being supported. I have a stack of games in boxes right now that I own - and they do not work anymore without getting hacky.
When I'm getting up there in years I'll probably put my Steam info in my wallet so someone can take it when I'm gone... but nobody's going to actually want it.
Now, if I die in a car accident tomorrow the account's just lost. I don't write my passwords down anyway.
I will be reincarnated into myself to finish my backlog
That one time i was reincarnated back into myself so i could finish my massive steam backlog as a slime
I'd watch that anime
uh.. did something went wrong with your reincarnation?
That unironically could be the title of an isekai light novel.
Are we sure it isn't already? It might be now that it's been put out into the world.
This thread will be featured in Hottest Trash Anime of Spring 2031 for bringing to life yet another generic isekai.
He's making a joke about overly long anime titles. (which are based on overly long Light Novel titles.)
İm pretty süre HES making a joke about the famous slime meeting anime
Read that as "He's making a joke about overly long anime titties" and was even more confused.
Gamer being isekai’d into their computer to possess it and continue to play games would be interesting lol
But what is stopping just leaving your username/password on a piece of paper and transferring Steam Guard? I feel like this is one of those things we didn't need a "confirm" on.
Ya im just gunna give my future grandchild my steam login and email lmao
"Huh, Gramps really liked hentai dating sims"
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
Huh the apple doesn’t seem to fall far from the tentacle
The... the what?
#THE TENTACLE-SAMA...
Apple.
What? You expect us to pick apples by hand? Like some kind of rube?
You’re joking, but a family friend had her uncle die some time ago, and they found his absolutely massive porn collection when they went to clean up his flat. Like, continuous collections from issue 1 to like 50+ (sometimes 100+) on some magazines, a bunch of films on 8mm (I think) with a matching projector, the works. We actually ended up indexing the whole thing to try and sell the collection, but nothing came of it.
I find it hard to believe that no one came…
Nice
I did but upon getting there I found the price to be out of my range so it was a bust.
i came
at what point does it stop being an obsession and become genuinely a hobby/collection worthy of preservation at a museum or world record book?
You could have just hid it in random hollow tree stumps throughout the forests
Gramps, aka BussySlayer69
xXxBussyGodxSlayerxXx Man I do miss the old internet sometimes
Only Sometimes?
Man, the pre-corporatized internet was soo amazing. Just a bunch of nerds on the internet, making content for each other and being idiots. No one constantly trying to grift you or track you or monetize you. I imagine it was how early settlers to various regions felt, with the lack of government oversight and overall lawlessness, but not having massive corporations able to oppress and control everything so it was kinda worth it.
Ill leave this as a nkte with it lmfao "Jimmy, unless you 100% all my hentai dating sims all other games will be locked. Love grampa"
That's not a bad deal..
I mean Horny house wives is an amazing game. 10/10
It had some of the best story and writing I've seen in years.
For real tho it looked so bad i couldnt play it lmao
Jeeze spoiler alerts for ready player one
Huniepop is pretty epic, so at least they know I liked good dating sims.
Honestly better than having to sort out the piles of porn in gramps wardrobe.
You don't wanna check which pages are "sealed"?
"Don't throw it away, we can clone him!"
Went through this when my uncle died. He had entire bookshelves full of it. Dude had subscriptions starting from the early 70s up until he died in 97. Almost 30 years of multiple mags....
Your uncle was a straight up gooner bro
He put the second o in gooner. Eventually time caught up with him, he had his last o and then he was just a goner.
now hes a goner
Found gay porn in my grandad's wardrobe after he died. He was the biggest bigot of big bigots.
"Huh. He left all the hentai out in the open and set all the fluffy hand holding games to Hidden."
hentai vs furries is 10/10 game
Gramps really did complete hentai Hitler
The new way of finding grandpa's porn
That is actually the explanation of Valve's stance on this matter, they want to save your dignity.
"These pigeons really love me"
He also got every achievement and played 20,000 hours of House Party.
"Son, finish my Steam backlog. If you can..." "Dad, why do you have so many games you haven't finished or even started playing?" "Because...Steam Sale..." \*dies\*
That's going to be me. I've got over 100 Steam games, 90% roughly were on sale and most never played.
not much i got over 400
100 is nothing, try almost a thousand
Humble Bundle in my case, i got a few 10+ games bundles back in the day
This stream account has been in our family for generations!
This steam user is 124 years old, impressive.
Be fun for them for a hot minute. But would be like when I got my dads old atari and the games were just horrible for the most part. Pac-man is a crappier version than in the arcade, Pitfall, damn crocs always killing ya. Space invaders is ok. Then you get to ET and you throw the system at the wall and burn it. Also if the game can't be played on mobile a lot of kids are just gonna be skipping it, but they prob will just need to download some tools.
actuslly, why not put the authentication credentials in the testament ?
[удалено]
It would actually be kind of hilarious if you were 105 years old playing on steam and they put a pop up that you're account has been active for 90 years and asking if you're actually still alive.
Also needs to use "when I'm Sixty-four" by the beatles. It will be public domain by then....
Stanley parable 2 achievement. 'live a life' don't play the game for 80 years.
"This user that said on account creation that they were born in january 1st 1900, has been active for 90 years now".
"Huh, for some reason so many extremely long-lived video game enthusiasts happened to be born on that exact date. What are the chances?"
I remember a game studio (I think it was Konami about the MGS2 demo) in the early 2000s bragging about how their latest demo was successful even in countries where the game would not be sold, "such as Afghanistan". Apparently it didn't occur to them that Afghanistan was just the first item in a list of countries.
That was Konami, good god that was hilarious at the time. Also, fuck im old.
I remember Steam actually making jokes about how many of their users are born on the New Year. Maybe an April First video or something?
Believe it was a happy new year and happy birthday to half our users lmao. We got called out.
How can you select 1900 if time only started in 1970?
OK grandpa, most game registration allows you to choose from the GUI. The gamer doesn't need to know anything about the Clock.
Steam doesn't ask you for your date of birth on account creation, just that you confirm you're older than 13. They don't actually tie the date of birth you enter on the store to your account, which is why you get asked repeatedly instead of a one off.
You actually get asked repeatedly because that's what the law in the USA requires. They're not asking if the account holder is old enough. They're asking if the person sitting in front of the keyboard right now is old enough.
It's wild how people just assume that Valve didn't think of such a simple solution...and even wilder how they assume Valve is such a good guy and "oh they're just saying it because that's what they gotta say but they would *never* do anything that I don't like!"
Given that you can pick early 20th century as your birth date, it's questionable if Valve would care. But by the time we get to accounts being active for almost a century who knows what will happen to Valve and if there will be Valve.
Yeah Valve just mean it cannot be done in a Will for example
I know you’re right, but you shouldnt be. We **really** need some international lawmakers to come online soon and sort out laws around ownership of digital media.. cause, you know, of **course** I own my steam account and all the games on it. And **of Course** I should be able to *will* that away..
BUT that's the thing. You don't actually own the goes on your list you own the right to play that game. This has been done with software since windows 3.2 We don't own shit :( it's complete bs and one of the reasons they pushed to go away from physical cd's
...yeah. which is the thing they're saying should be illegal...
You’re right, that’s why we’re discussing the need for new legislation
That's why GOG has said that, if you buy a game from them, there's nothing stopping you from downloading it and burning it to a CD. They've also said that, in the unlikely case they go out of business, they're going to give as much notice as possible to give people time to download their game libraries, and will even try to help people who will have trouble with that.
Which was exactly the point I was making.
If buying software isn't ownership then piracy isn't theft... Edit to make those complaining about "licences" happy; If buying a software licence isn't ownership then piracy isn't theft... It doesn't matter the wording, a purchase is a purchase, goods exchanged hands (even if those hands and goods are purely digital), if the company wants the licence back then goods need to exchange hands again...
Piracy is actually called the term for (violent) robbery in Germany. Lobbies be strong yo
YOU WOUKDNT STEAL A CAR
> YOU WOULDN'T ~~STEAL~~ DOWNLOAD A CAR Ftfy
It's cheaper to buy a car than amount of materials needed to 3D print the car from scratch
It literally isn’t. I once went to a talk held by a copyright lawyer, who said the whole analogy of infringement to theft is BS at a basic level. Rather, he said, copyright infringement of digital works is much more similar to hopping over the turnstile at a subway station or riding a bus without a ticket. It’s still illegal, but far less heinous than theft.
You are saying this like it’s a some law of the universe and just not a human made one. Valve could easily be forced to recognize you owning a digital copy and give you more agency over it.
If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing.
Valve: You can't transfer your account. Reporter: But what about... Valve: You can't transfer your account.
I did this; wrote down all my passwords and usernames for my digital stuff and my husband knows where they are. I made it very clear (we're still young and don't have wills) that if anything happens to me that he's to give that username and password to whomever he feels will enjoy those games, cause i have over 450 games on my steam account and there's no way I'm letting those just go unused.
In the future valve could simply delete or freeze accounts it suspects have transferred owners. Imagine after an account hits like 80-90 years old, valve could just assume original owner is dead and it’s now an unauthorized account.
95 year old me: Ay yo what the fuck???
Yo, I can't play VR Canasta with my homies anymore, WTF?
I can imagine myself on the phone. I was in the middle of my 90th Anniversary Edition Skyrim run and just about to kill Alduin when my service got shut off? You better turn it back on before I have my great grandchildren bring me over to your offices and I beat you with my walker!
Right?!! Fallout 5 and GTA 6 were juuuuuuuuuust about to come out too hahahaha
We're assuming valve will be the biggest gaming platform in 70 years time. It's possible, but so many other tech companies faded in less time.
I can see Valve still being around as long as whoever takes over from Gaben when the time comes sticks to his strategy of "sit back, do nothing and let the competition shoot themselves in the foot". So many businesses fail to learn the old adage of "if it ain't broke don't fix it", keep changing things for the sake of it and just make things worse.
Not doing things while your competition is innovating is also a good way to destroy your business. There is no one size fits all answer as to how a business should operate to survive.
*Imagine if Valve wasn’t around in 30 years…*
You can but any support request and you mention you arent the original owner, they will close the request and then close the account.
Have you had this happen? I gave my brother my secondhand card/inventory grinder and he can use support no issues about things he bought. In what instance would they ask that? Or are you saying because of the age the account would flag? I think Steam wouldn't want to turn away money regardless of amount and if the account was able to be verified.
Ive only heard the horror stories. It is usually only if you need to do something that proves your the account owner such as a password reset or report a hacked account etc. Sometimes people lose access to the verification app, or lose access to the email linked, so they support asks for ID verification.
OP seems to just be a karma farming account that chain links trending reddit meta topics, so I wouldn't really think too deep about it.
That is a workaround, not a solution to the problem.
A single support agent answering a rare/strange question isn't the same to me as "Valve confirms". I'll hold of until Valve gives an official press statement about it.
I mean why would they though? As u/RetroSwamp said, there's no need to confirm this as it can be circumvented in practice. It's just one of those cases where the company really couldn't give a shit but the technicalities forbid it and changing your TOS for some silly edge cases is just waste of time and money.
You can circumvent it right now but if you get caught your account gets banned. That's the crux of the question. Everyone knows you can *do* it, it's what happens if you get caught doing it.
Right. While that may be true, my point was that I highly doubt Valve would care enough to start actually, properly, monitoring it. Unless someone admits to it publicly ofc, but then that's their own fault. As an analogue you can think of a law that is usually unenforced.
Strange as it is though, we do live with the realistic possibility of someone with a large steam library of video games that they have paid for, who then dies and gave his account information to his next of kin. Like this isn't exactly a rare and impossible thing: everyone with a steam account will die one day.
and then we respawn right?
Hope you bought the afterlife dlc.
That works as long as nobody sue valve. And if I will die, there is a good reason to get the account, at least for all the items. And I‘m sure EU law stands over their TOS.
Human mortality is a silly edge case?
In the grand scheme of the ToS and what is relevant and happening on a regular basis, yes someone dying and passing on the account is a silly edge case
It's a silly edge case now. The generations that are currently old and dying don't generally have full Steam libraries. But fast forward 40-50 years and you suddenly have millions of accounts loaded with games being passed on to younger generations, and every one of them meaning lost money to Valve. Edit: A lot of people keep bringing up the same points, but I already adressed this in my next comment so I'm not going to be replying to everyone separately
The reality for 99.9% of people is that this will be like your grandparents passing away and leaving you a box full of VHS movies. You could argue that the film companies have lost out but in actuality the person was never going to re-buy the films anyway.
> and every one of them meaning lost money to Valve That's totally unsubstantiated though. If Steam had been around 40 years agp and today you inherited Grandpa's account, you'd have... Tetris? Super Mario Bros? The OG Legend of Zelda? How much money are you really spending on those old games that would be "lost" because you inherited the account? I seriously doubt many people will ever be in a scenario where inherting af amily member's account gives them a meaningful number od games they otherwise would have purchased. IMO it's only really an issue when black market reselling starts happening (e.g. you get Grandpa's account appraised and sell it to a site that resells it to someone who likes what's in its library).
> If Steam had been around 40 years agp and today you inherited Grandpa's account, you'd have... Tetris? Super Mario Bros? If Grandpa died today I doubt he's currently playing tetris. And if he'd had the account for 40 years and been active on it I'm pretty sure he'd have accumulated at least a few games people today still value.
If you are a good enough product it affects 100% of your customers eventually.
I see, you don't work in IT. No user actually reported the problem with their very own steam account. It only affects 1% of users per year. It's a silly edge case. /s
its not like anyone with an account over at steam is gonan die eventually. Thats just silly.
My younger brother killed himself recently and I’d love to be able to access his Steam account and tell his (only, because of his social anxiety) friends what has happened. It’s not a silly edge case to me.
Not just **a** support agent. They all reply the same. I made this question some time ago because we got curious with my friends about what would happen, I pulled up my phone, messaged Steam Support with the question and they said that it was not possible to transfer your account.
Pretend it is possible: how? What's stopping a scammer from "inheriting" my account?
It says in the Steam Subscriber Agreement that accounts can't be transferred. This doesn't really need to be "Valve confirms", because the real question is if anyone has ever seen any reason to believe it doesn't work this way.
Yeah, this wasn't a Valve Lawyer weighing in, this was Tier 1 or 2 support responding to a question based on Steam's ToS. Enough jurisdictions have laws regarding "digital property" and the like that I don't feel like this is settled *at all*. Once someone takes Valve to court to claim inheritance or communal property rights to a Steam account, then we'll *start* to see what the actual legal situation is.
Ok. Writing down my info and putting in the safe lol. Catch my 120 year old Steam account still playing TF2 (there is no TF3 yet)
Steam already thinks I was born in 1901, they're going to have some old ass gamers on their platform by the time anyone takes them over as inheritance
Steam still asks for my age regularly and I've been using it since like 2006.
Yeah, they don't really care about that. Valve just doesn't want the liability/drama of giving away passwords over to someone else. Too much effort is needed to verify fakes/hacks to make the service worth it.
It's Back to feudal days to let my son inherit my account, but then his younger brother plans to kill him, his uncles too, and even my bastard also wants to kill him.
Gavelkind meant i only got dad's farming simulator DLCs 😢
Time to marry your sister and press your game claims.
r/suddenlycrusaderkings
You jest but at point in time, North Korea only had one listed steam account active in Pyongyang.
John Wick, you're a hunted man.
Valve needs to open gaming retirement communities so we can finally make a dent in our backlogs before we die.
> retirement communities look at this guy with his retirement money bags!
I would have enough money for retirement if I hadn't spent so much buying games I haven't played
Everything is only illegal if you get caught. Give your account to someone and say nothing to anyone. Does valve do an audit of accounts? How would they know your hand isn't on the kb&m as opposed to someone else's? Just pass on all viable information(user info, customer service info, wrc.), have them use steam gift cards, etc.
Date of birth: 1983 *The year is 2182*
[удалено]
I guess 90% of all Steam Account Users were born on January 1st.
Valve made a joke about that at one point.
They're not asking the age of the account holder. They're asking the age of the person sitting at the keyboard. Because it's a legal requirement, not because they really care themselves.
prove I'm not 199 years old mister
Steam already assumes I'm 124 years old and they don't seem to care.
*Please enter your birth date to continue* I have mine set for 1900 🤣🤣🤣
I thought we were all born in 1901.
They don't, they don't ask for ID or anything like that, the only information they get from your is from your payment method, even then, I used my mom's credit card originally, because I was a kid, then I switched to mine and they never asked me anything about it. People move all the time and you can even keep using the same store until you add a new payment method, so if you move from South America to Europe, you stay in your SA store until you add a new European credit card. I have friends that moved and kept using their original store for years. Obviously if an account was active for over 100 years they would know that it's probably not the original owner using it anymore, but they wouldn't actually give enough of a fuck to close it. It's more of a case that they don't want to be spending resources in setting up a system for people to be asking for the password of inactive accounts, it would require them to actually start asking people for a lot more information.
Well that’s a bit morbid. Happy Memorial Day.
Hate to tell you, but one day you're going to die and none of us are promised tomorrow.
More like, one day he's going and none of us are promised his game library.
im already 124 years old, im not dying anytime soon.
Honestly though? I'm like 99% sure that the only reason they don't let you transfer your account after you die, is because currently? There's no real way to "attach" an account to an actual person. Like there's no way to tie your steam account into your real life identity. When you make a Steam account, you don't need to put in any personal info whatsoever. There's no ID verification or anything like that. So, there's no way for Steam to even confirm in the first place, that this specific account belongs to this specific person. Like let's say you die. And your hypothetical wife contacts Steam asking for the account to be transferred to her. How would Steam confirm that you were even the original owner of the account? They can't. They have zero information on the account holder's real identity. So, they can't just transfer your account after you die. Not unless they start storing personal information of every account holder, but that would be a massive privacy risk. Imagine having to upload a government ID just to make a Steam account, everyone would be against that. But that's what needs to happen in order for Steam to be able to confirm the identities of account holders and properly transfer them in the event of death. Now obviously, you can just write down your login info on a piece of paper before you die. Steam can't really stop you from doing that.
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Really. If I paid money to own a game, can I give that game to someone else? There is no difference between whether it is a digital or real CD, it is a product.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin torrenting. -H.L. Mencken
They're not saying you can't give your login info to someone before you die. They're just saying that they won't facilitate the process.
Why is this in the news cycle? This has been known for years and the work around has always been just leaving your username and password to someone else in your belongings.
Rage bait attempt
"this steam account has been on my family for generations, some add new games, some people strive to complete all the games they can, some just enjoy it leisurely. Now is your turn."
Have used a family member's account (now deceased) for 10+ years and 100+ purchases with no incident. Valve won't confirm this due to the legal implications and framework required to support a legal transfer of an account.
This isn't new. It applies to all digital libraries for all media on any platform. That being said, there's nothing stopping you from leaving a note or message to someone with your account details. No corp would ever know.
My password can.
Let's just revisit this discussion in 20ish years when it actually becomes a wide spread issue?
Uh-huh. I have a Keepass file with every single account I have with all the needed information for my wife and two kids to access my accounts and use them. I have that KeePass file backed up on 2 cloud sites, an external SSD, and a thumb drive. I have had my Steam account since 2003 so there is zero way I am letting that go to waste. My twin boys are currently 8yrs old and are now PC gamers like me so I absolutely want them to have my game accounts after I die.
You will own nothing and you will enjoy it.
You can bequeath cars, houses, boats, baseball card collections, records, books, TV's, toasters... But your license to borderlands is a sacred text incalculably valuable that must die with the body.
It can, just shut the fuck up about it. I swear, I have no idea what it is with idiots and snitching on themselves. Just share the credentials and SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.
This is probably more to do with someone dying unexpectedly and family members wanting to be granted access to the account.
If a friend or loved one passed unexpectedly, the last thing I'm gonna worry about is a handful of free games. Like Jesus fucking Christ, what a Reddit moment.
Yeah, and it's up to valve to find the fakes trying to steal your account. So not worth it for valve to mess with that shit.
Yes you can, just pass down your email and logins.
Gabe's a greedy cunt
"The confirmation came from the Steam support staff" yeah the support staff aka customers service of any company isn't exactly the go to spot for inside info. I don't know why people make stories from some unreliable garbage source like this (I do actually, it's to gain hits). Some guy in a call center that is no where in the same country as the Valve headquarters is going to give you the inside scoop so stop this shit.
Have digital rights/ownership ever been challenged in court? Feels like as more time goes by and more people invest lots of money into their digital collections (whether games/music/movies/books) that this gets sorted out in the court system. Kind of feel like it’s all still new for people to be up in arms over ownership transfer upon death.
I'd wager a lot of states would consider a Steam account part of someone's estate.
Yeah it can I'll leave them my password it's really easy
Corporate greed at its finest
Reddit still going to come in hot to defend Valve and how they are really good guys because they fixed the stick on my Steam Deck for free.
Just look at the difference in response to this and Sony asking people to log into a free account. Where simply switching regions was too dangerous because it was against TOS people are perfectly fine just sharing passwords for their large library of purchased games. It’s crazy how much leeway people give Steam vs ANYONE else having the slightest hiccup instantly causing outrage.
I mean you can, Valve isn't going to track when each if their customers die and purge accounts, you can leave your login. What they're confirming you can't do is transfer the contents of the account to someone else.
Honestly I don't get why they care so much. If someone wants to leave their account to their children then they should be able to.
They are able to, valve just doesn't want to be emailed a picture of a death certificate and facilitate a process of transfer ownership when you instead could just give your username and password to whoever wants it
Couldn’t care less about that, Valve. What happens to my Steam Library when *you* die?
Fortunately, Valve's Terms of Service are not law. What I do with my Steam account is my own business, and Valve would have to violate actual laws to determine the real user of the account.
This is why GOG storefront is superior..... Even though valve is better than Epic is regards to consumer friendly, nothing beats DRM free and unfortunately a lot of games have DRM on steam versions of games including steams own DRM
I've been thinking about this since I saw it mentioned the other day. First, my collection is worth a lot right now - but it won't be in 30 years. It might be a couple hundred bucks at best due to the games that will be cult classics, but most games will be purchased at a few dollars. Nobody else is going to have exactly the same interests as me, so most of the games tied to the account aren't going to get played once I'm gone. Then we come to support - can we really say in 2-3 more OS's all these games are still going to work? This is just the way it's going to go with computer games. Online services get closed, games stop being supported. I have a stack of games in boxes right now that I own - and they do not work anymore without getting hacky. When I'm getting up there in years I'll probably put my Steam info in my wallet so someone can take it when I'm gone... but nobody's going to actually want it. Now, if I die in a car accident tomorrow the account's just lost. I don't write my passwords down anyway.
I have been reading this same story in this same subreddit every single day for a fucking week now. How many times is this going to be reposted?
Didn't you get this "information" from a tweet? All you have to do is give your family member your email and password. It's not that difficult.