I have been working on my Will (the who gets what when I die thing) and I was wondering about the value and ability to transfer my games library. I know many will poo-poo it but there is some real value there. Easily several thousand dollars. Not huge but not nothing either.
Are those assets I can give to those after me? Or do I need to never let them (the game companies) know I died and just pass along the passwords?
FTR: I am not dying (that I am aware of). Just working on my Will.
This is probably going to be determined by the terms and conditions in the contract you’ve made with each individual gaming platform. I hope you like reading fine print.
If I could speculate, though, I’d say that the games are probably not transferable, because digital publishers/distributors in general have a twenty-year history of using technology and legal wrangling to strip from users the basic rights and abilities that they traditionally employed with physical media. The technical and contractual restrictions on lending, transferring/donating, backing up, and partial copying (for example, for fair-use quotation) of e-books and streamed music and videos has been extensively documented in the tech and Internet rights press. I’d be surprised if the situation were any different with digitally distributed games, and if these restrictions didn’t also apply to inheritance.
That said, you can probably go ahead and bequeath the games in your will without bothering to check the terms and conditions for your games. In the worst case, that particular bequest will be inoperative, but that shouldn’t affect the validity of the rest of the will.
You can’t merge steam libraries or transfer games from one steam library to another. You can provide the password to your steam library and your inheritors could log out of their library and into yours anytime they wanted to play a game. Doing so technically is against the Steam TOS but there’s no way for them to check or verify that. This is the same as iTunes libraries and most other digital stores.
The game companies probably don’t even have any method in place to transfer games from one account to another (it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to create such a method; they’ve just never had any reason to, and they’re certainly not going to consider your will to be a reason for them to do so). So law aside, the only way you’d be able to transfer your games would be by giving your heir the password to your account.
And that’s probably about it. Just like they don’t have any procedure for transferring games, they probably don’t have any procedure for marking an account as dead, either. There, they probably would come up with something if someone made fuss about it, but you’re not planning on making a fuss.
According to the Steam ToS, no. You do not own your games - you own a personal license to make use of the games (“content and services”) on your account. You do not have the right to transfer either your account or the services which you’ve purchased licenses for.
Without checking any other terms of use, I suspect this applies to nearly every other online service we make use of.
Realistically, Chronos is correct - they would have no way of knowing that you’ve given your account to someone else.
If you’re serious about making these things accessible, I’d suggest getting a password manager, using it for every single one of your accounts, and bequeathing access to that in your will. Nobody but your heir needs to know what they’re gaining access to.
I agree - the vendors will make it as difficult if not impossible to transfer these purchases. Consider, too - either the assorted logins will be tied to an email, so if Bob gets your Steam and Sally gets your iTunes, they will have to change your account to point to their email for recovery of passwords, etc. BUT!! Odds are some of these vendors don’t allow multiple accounts on the same email, so now people will have to have multiple email accounts just to maintain multiple logins.
A few generations from now, this could get very confusing. But… not to worry. Vendors will either figure out biometric logins, or else they will convert all games to rentals - much as Adobe has done with Photoshop etc. and Microsoft is doing with Office.
I’ve wondered about a similar aspect. My father wrote a number o scientific papers and a technical book. He bequeathed his property 3 way; so who owns his copyright on those items? Do I need to get permission from my 2 other relatives to publish those? Similarly, I have his photo collection… also his copyright.
There’s a lot of virtual “property” that is now rivaling some physical property in value.
Long before that, they’ll probably implement identity checks in the name of upgrading “security”. PayPal is already doing this on one of the business accounts I opened fifteen years ago (and already, at the time, submitted copies of all necessary ID). So even if an heir gets access to your account, they may lose it if/when the company decides to (re-)demand proof of identity.
My Steam library currently has 483 games in it. If we assume an average price of $10/game we are getting close to $5,000 in value (and I think the average value of my games is worth more). So, not nothing.
Then add in my Epic, Origin, GOG, Battle.net and Ubisoft game libraries and we’ve sailed well passed $5,000 in value. Maybe not enough to go to court over but enough to care about.
I guess after a couple of successive inheritances when 150 years have elapsed they may start to wonder if their game conferes immortality.
OTOH some tech companies are very stupid. Google, for instance, wants me to prove I am an adult to be able to see some YouTube videos with an account I have had for over 18 years. You may have to include a scan of some ID proof in your inheritance so your heirs can proof they are you and adults.
Especially considering DLC. Steam counts my individual games but not the DLC I have added. So, a $60 game like Warhammer II also has over $100 in DLC.
So, my copy of Warhammer II is worth nearly $170 if bought new (at today’s price). That’s 3.4% of the $5000 mentioned all by itself. Granted, that is unusual but illustrates the point.
Instead of the password manager, just leave them the passwords. All it takes is your password manager to change the terms of service or close shop and they will all be lost. In case you are wondering yes it happened to me.
In a recent will, the rights to digital accounts and username and password usage was included. The actual user name and passwords were not in the will itself, but the right to use them them and to access whatever is in their was stated explicitly. Now how this works for a individual asset (like a steam account), IDK but may be needed to have them unlock the account if the beneficiary does not have all the information. It would also seem to be useful to have if the account ever call you into question as to unauthorized use/theft of services or simply a ownership battle with a hacker.
Where I come from it takes about a year from death until the enactment of the will and disbursement of the assets. This is to allow enough time for anyone who feels they have a claim to any part of the estate to make that claim. It can take longer though, especially when the deceased had a large estate or property overseas. Bear that in mind - there will be a long period of time that, without your specific instructions to the executor of the will, accounts won’t get accessed, dues won’t be paid etc.
When my mom died we disbursed about 2/3 of the assets within a few months. The other 1/3 was withheld for a year to make sure any debts were paid and whatever was left was then handed out.
Of course, I imagine how this is approached can vary a lot depending on circumstances.
But, keep in mind that their value is not the same as what you originally paid for them, and software tends not to appreciate in value. I’m not sure how one would assess the value of a digital library (of games, books, music, movies…).
But my copy of Total War: Warhammer II has a value of $170 today (actually more because I have Warhammer I which links in to Warhammer II but for simplicity let’s ignore that).
If I died and my estate wanted to sell my Steam library then they would go through and value each game at what Steam is selling it for today. Granted, no one would want to pay full value for the lot but it still is worth something and enough to care about (half-price is $2500…not huge but enough to pay attention to).
Not all password managers store the data remotely on some company server. Pick a nice offline one that runs on free software and you’ll be fine. (I use pass though there are plenty of others that have a more user-friendly graphical interface.)