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After you die, your Steam games will be stuck in legal limbo (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.world

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Saw a article on a large number of gamers being over 55 and then I saw this which I believe needs to be addressed in our current laws.

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[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Lol...your personal library at home is composed of physical objects that you bought and assembled into what you call a library. A better word might be a "collection" rather than a library, but we're getting into semantics here.

You seem to be getting very emotional about this. Your anger should really be directed towards Steam, or maybe yourself for not reading the T&C.

DRM is used for copy and piracy protection, yes, but it encompasses many kinds of digital rights, including access. Steam itself is DRM -- they manage the rights of which account holders can access which digital games. Even with Steam's Offline mode (which not all games support), you can run into situations where you can't play your game offline because of update issues.

Give the Steam T&C a skim, and find out whether you own your games forever. And if I'm wrong and you find something in the T&C that invalidates what I've said, then I'd be happy to see it.

Digital content doesn't fall under the same rules as physical items, for better or for worse.

[–] kernelle@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You seem to be missing my point, it is very clear what Valve thinks about this. It's literally the article above? And I get their point, but I'm arguing they don't have a legal leg to stand on.

In the EU there is legal precedent to give access to every account of a deceased person to their next of kin. T&C doesn't mean shit when it goes against consumer protection or civil laws.

When the T&C say you have to give your kidney to Gabe Newell it won't hold up in court.

[–] otp@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago

In the EU there is legal precedent to give access to every account of a deceased person to their next of kin.

I thought we were discussing whether or not a game purchased on Steam is something that the purchaser "owns" just like a physical game...

But if that precedent is there, it'll be interesting to see it play out. Steam users in the EU have definitely died before, but I guess nobody has ever put one in their will yet? Or tried to do an account transfer?

It's one thing to share the credentials, but I don't think we'll see Steam games going from one account (owned by a deceased person) being transferred into an existing account of someone named in the will.

...which, of course, would be perfectly possible to happen with physical games.