Where will your Steam games go when they die? Apparently, nowhere

Thinking about what will happen to our belongings when we die is normal, and apparently, they won’t go anywhere: because we don’t own our Steam games.

It’s not a very happy thought, but we will all die. Even things we take for granted like the planet, the stars, and the universe. It’s not something we have to worry about, because it will be a long time from now, but it’s normal to think, what will happen to our things? And among our possessions, we can’t overlook one of the most valuable. Our Steam account.

A Resetera user has written to Steam support to ask exactly this. “Can I put my Steam library in my will?”. And the answer has been very clear. Steam has said that they are sorry, but no.

The reason is very simple. When we buy a game on Steam, we are buying a game with DRM. We don’t own the game, but we buy the digital license to play it. That’s why they can take it away from us or even make it disappear from our computer. Technically, we don’t own the game. Therefore, we cannot share them with other people: they are not, in themselves, ours.

What is ours, however, is our Steam account. That’s why we can include our Steam account in our will. This means giving away our username, password, and two-factor authentication, so that person can access our account. Certainly less ideal than giving them our library for their account, but that’s the terrible thing about the digital age: you will own nothing and be happy.

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Author: Álvaro Arbonés

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