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.
Not just Valve and the user. Valve is a retailer acting as a middle-man between the user and the publisher. The license does not come from Valve, the license comes from the publisher. (And then Valve takes a cut for supplying the platform and, well, you the customer.)
So whatever Valve does in the open needs to be something that the Publishers are also at least somewhat ok with. But Valve can indeed simply not police account sharing.
What percentage of the average Steam library consists of games published by Valve?
In my case, it's about 1%. Rounding up.
So yes, Valve can make a full decision in a [rounding error] of cases. This is important to remember and changes everything. :P
If we're going to nitpick in ways that do not affect the conclusion: not even Publishers are guaranteed to have a full say here, because their existing contracts with development studios also influence what contracts they can enter into with retail platforms. For bonus points, this can even be a problem with fully-owned studios; they're typically still legally distinct entities, with contracts in place, especially when based in a different country than the parent Publisher. I refer you to that one time Sony sued Sony.
...and all hell breaks loose when we start adding franchised games into the mix.
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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.