Where do your Steam games go when you die?
You’re going to die one day. We all will. But what happens to your library of digital games when you do? It might not be the first order of business for your family or friends, but digital assets do have value — some people spend thousands of dollars over the course of their lifetime on video games, plenty of which are likely digital, through a storefront like Valve Corp.’s Steam.
A ResetEra forum user, delete12345, reached out to Steam customer support in May to ask: Can I put my Steam library in my will? You can, technically, if you pass along your login information — don’t forget two-factor authentication! — but the games you’ve purchased aren’t actually transferable to another person. The answer delete12345 got was effectively, We’re sorry, but no. (Polygon has reached out to Valve for clarification.)
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It seems pretty preposterous that you can’t pass down something that you own, but the thing is, you don’t own the games in your Steam library. The same goes for games purchased from other digital stores, like Microsoft’s and Sony’s online storefronts. Digital games are merely licensed digital assets. Valve states this clearly in the Steam user agreement: “The Content and Services are licensed, not sold.” You can argue that physical discs are glorified license keys, but the important detail there is that those licenses are transferable: You can legally lend your game to a friend for them to play, or sell it off entirely.
It’s an issue that’s not unique to video games, according to Texas Tech University School of Law professor Gerry W. Beyer and fiduciary officer Kerri G. Nipp. Beyer and Nipp wrote in Estate Planning Journal about an ultimately erroneous report that actor Bruce Willis wanted to sue Apple over his iTunes music library, which he wanted to leave to his children. Regardless of the veracity of the original claim, it brought the issue to the mainstream: The user agreement you click through when purchasing digital assets, like games, means you’ve
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