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Valve confirms your Steam account cannot be transferred to anyone after you die (www.techspot.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

64 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If you cannot pass on your ownership rights to your purchased games to your children, then you cannot pass on your copyright either, I guess?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

You typically don't get "ownership rights" when you purchase a game on Steam. You'll typically be purchasing a licence to play the game, which could be taken away at any point. Some Steam games don't include DRM after installation, and you'll truly own those games after downloading them. (you can search for a game here, and find the DRM used) I'd recommend avoiding purchasing games on Steam whenever DRM is included if you want to own the game you'd buy, there are a lot of online stores that sell games without DRM.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Can same game be with DRM on steam and without DRM on other platform.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yes, happens all the time on gog. They don't have the same library of games but there is an overlap.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If the game is DRM free on GOG it usually only has the Steamworks DRM on steam. That one is so easy to remove that you might aswell call it DRM free since its only use is to make publishers think their game is protected.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Yes. In those cases the steam DRM is usually for achievements, friend joining, and checking that it was run via steam.

There are plenty of "steam emulators" or even patchers that remove the steam DRM.

So as long as you have the files applications such as SteamEMU and Steamless are godsends in ensuring that when you "buy" a game you will still be able to play it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You typically don’t get “ownership rights” when you purchase a game on Steam. You’ll typically be purchasing a licence to play the game, which could be taken away at any point.

That is certainly what Valve thinks and writes in their TOS but if their store has a big button that says "BUY HALO" then courts may very well decide that you actually bought Halo.
And many countries have a strict legal definition of what buying means that cannot be overruled by some company's TOS.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's why the button says "purchase" instead of "buy" it's been a bit since I used Steam, so I had to check to be sure. I think there's a legal loophole there, but I'm not great with English.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

That’s why the button says “purchase” instead of “buy”

First off, they're synonyms
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/purchase#synonyms

Now, I'm certainly no expert on the US legal system. It certainly seems silly if you could circumvent entire laws just by using synonyms but what do I know.
However I have been talking about other countries where that is not the case and where the language is not English.
So It really doesn't matter whether it say "buy" or "purchase" in English when it's "kaufen" in German or "acheter" in French.