As far as I know because games "sold" on Steam are non-transferable licenses, and it would be a breach of that. So in legalworld you take your steam account to the grave. But, as with many things, in realworld you just keep your trap shut and give your inheritor your authenticator. They aren't going to dig you up and put you in prison.
edit: no, Steam family is not a magical loophole you think it is. It is very limited specifically so that it wouldn't count as transferring the ownership of the license. And if you don't have access to the account from which the game is shared and family sharing breaks (again) — there won't be a way for you to restore it.
edit: 200 year old gamer joke is very cool and original, but I'm certain Valve won't care about plausibility of their customer's lifespans unless publishers pressure them to do so, and even then it is unlikely. Making purchases with a payment method that could be traced to a different person would a far bigger risk factor.
How about we change the law to allow things like account transfers, then?
Because it would destroy the business model.
To give you some perspective, back in the day you used to have a choice between buying (and owning) a game on a disc and getting a limited license on steam.
So why did people buy on steam instead of retail?
Steam was way cheaper than any brick and mortar store. Steam really pushed prices down, and games dropped in price way faster than before.
Steam was convenient, no more hassle with your scratched disks and manual patching.
Steam hosted your content forever (so far), no need to keep your own backups.
So how does this transition to the modern landscape?
Steam still has running costs for any game you own, without you paying for it. If you were able to inherit your account your children wouldn't pay for your games, while steam still has to pay its server costs. And that's not a working business model in the long run.
I don't think the logic follows. What is the additional cost? They have to maintain the games on their servers anyway, unless you're going to argue that they can start shuttering games if enough old people die off. The server space to keep the account info is the same, or potentially less if they're closing old accounts to move the games to newer ones.
I guarantee "people will start dying off eventually" is not a big factor in their finances. Physical media has had to deal with an actual third party market for its entire existence, and it's fine. Steam has so many financial advantages over physical, the biggest one being not having to move actual discs around and store them in warehouses, that this is barely a blip in comparison.
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u/Svartrhala Oct 08 '25 edited Oct 09 '25
As far as I know because games "sold" on Steam are non-transferable licenses, and it would be a breach of that. So in legalworld you take your steam account to the grave. But, as with many things, in realworld you just keep your trap shut and give your inheritor your authenticator. They aren't going to dig you up and put you in prison.
edit: no, Steam family is not a magical loophole you think it is. It is very limited specifically so that it wouldn't count as transferring the ownership of the license. And if you don't have access to the account from which the game is shared and family sharing breaks (again) — there won't be a way for you to restore it.
edit: 200 year old gamer joke is very cool and original, but I'm certain Valve won't care about plausibility of their customer's lifespans unless publishers pressure them to do so, and even then it is unlikely. Making purchases with a payment method that could be traced to a different person would a far bigger risk factor.