Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobbiechen | Hacker News Reader

I'm sorry to hear that.

On the topic of Steam, according to their terms of service, you buy non-transferable licenses for access, and they will argue you can't inherit the games of a deceased person: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/after-you-die-your-st... . This follows a tradition of digital media providers asserting deep control over things that you might think you "own" : https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

(I had a hard time fitting this thread into the blog post and eventually cut it)

View on HN

At the risk of possibly sounding crass, the practical solution is to simply never tell them of the decedent's passing.

Unless the matter of concern is a legal or financial one (eg: bank accounts, pensions, insurance, etc.), quite literally nothing and nobody else requires knowledge that the account holder passed away.

Never tell Valve that your gamer dad passed away and they will be none the wiser and noone will have any problems as you "inherit" his account and its associated games. You're not trying to defraud Social Security as a 150 year old, after all (...right?).

This might work for the first generation of steam users for now, but eventually they might require some kind of verification for old Steam accounts. Also remember that Steam is providing two things - a license for the games and a service to download them. I wouldn't expect a court to agree that a relatively low one-time fee obliges Steam to provide your or your heirs a service in perpetuity.

Why take the chance for games that you can get DRM-free and transfer independently from some live service.

Yes that is a claim they have made, but unless they show up in probate court to defend that position, they will do what the judge orders them to in a default judgement.

Have you gotten a probate court to order Steam to transfer games, which they then followed?

I am still alive, so no, I have not.

Hopefully your family won't have to test it for a long time then :-)

Please don't state something as a matter-of-fact if you don't know it to be true but just merely believe it to be true. Otherwise please link to an instance where a probate court has ordered it with a successful outcome.

It seems like a novel idea and I hope someone tries it and posts about it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com