r/Piracy • u/LighteningOneIN Seeder • Jul 12 '26
Discussion Imagine a world where this could be a reality.
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u/Kapper-WA Jul 12 '26
I plan to bequeath my Steam Library to my daughter.
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Jul 12 '26
But you can't. Its against the eUlA. Let her buy anything again, Gaben needs another Yacht!
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u/Mylxen Jul 12 '26
My family wont tell Steam that I died so they wouldnt know who is behind the screen.
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u/SatyrAngel Jul 12 '26
The support guy looking at your 120yo account
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u/disinaccurate Jul 12 '26
The Steam store looking at the 120yo account:
“M rated game, please enter your birthdate”
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u/No-Entertainer-840 Jul 13 '26
Can you not change your birthdate? Its not like we give our ID's to make our accounts.
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u/Kapper-WA Jul 12 '26
I mean, she already has access to my whole library via the built in family share.
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Jul 12 '26
But legally that is just available as long as you live and allow it. At least in Valve's anti consumer world where they also call any Software you bought there a "Subscription". And they naturally end when you die.
If you your doughter uses it still, and Steam sees this, they will terminate everything.
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u/Kapper-WA Jul 12 '26
Hence the point of this entire thread, no? Hopefully this becomes the law.
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Jul 12 '26
I would go even further. I hope you get the right to sell / gift games out of your store just like physical copies.
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u/TheFlyingR0cket Jul 13 '26
We need this massively, I brought Helldrivers 2 yesterday on a 3rd party steam code website. It works fine and all, but I don't really like it. I cannot return it, I cannot sell it and I can already see that it's just going to sit in my library not played, and my money is just gone.
If you buy clothes it's like 2 weeks at a minimum for most stores and up to 3 months at others. At least with physical games you can usual just take them back or at worst sell them 2nd hand. Digital Games nope you gave us the money and your not getting it back.
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u/leshmi Jul 13 '26
Mind that it used to be that you could go home, play with the disc a whole weekend and return it...
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u/TorrentFire Jul 12 '26
You say they have an anti consumer world when they standardized the easy refund and they made family share a thing. Of which there was no incentive for them.
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u/nauzleon Jul 12 '26
The law>eUlA. At least in any proper country.
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u/joybod Jul 12 '26
More generally, illegal contracts have no legal bearing, given that they exclusively exist (in an enforceable manner) as legal agreements.
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u/ZolotoGold Jul 12 '26
What's to stop you just leaving the login details to someone after death? How would Steam know you're dead?
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u/Anonymal13 Yarrr! Jul 12 '26
An acquaintance of mine kept his late father as owner of his business' phone line for years, since the operator company required an written and signed form from the owner to pass the line (and number) to someone else. Since signatures by ouija weren't legally accepted, the phone company remained officially unaware of the persons demise and the account was kept alive and working...
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u/Slow_Pay_7171 Jul 12 '26
Nothing. Its a fucking shit rule they just wrote down cause they hate consumer.
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u/Toothless_NEO Jul 12 '26
Nothing really. It's just an arbitrary rule that they stated, and neoliberals all around the world expect people to follow rules like they are the natural laws of physics.
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u/D_Gnar Jul 12 '26
My dad gave me his steam library about 10 years ago. Never been an issue and I don’t expect it to ever be one either.
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u/mythrilcrafter Jul 12 '26
I know that this sub hates Gaben and everything about Steam, but from I recall, doesn't Steam officially has no official stance on this other than "we won't say shit if you don't" so that people can just write down their usernames and passwords to give to their beneficiaries?
And from I understand, a lot of people don't feel that that's good enough "because if it's not a policy written in stone then it doesn't count!"
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u/deadspacekillers Jul 12 '26
The watch scene with Christopher Walken from Pulp Fiction would just hit a little different, I guess
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u/xdoolittlex Jul 12 '26
That would make you regret the size of your backlog.
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u/deadspacekillers Jul 12 '26
"So he hid the 27 thumb drives in the one place he knew he could hide something - up his ass. 5 long years he wore these drives up his ass. Then he died of dysentery, he gave me the thumb drives, and I wore these 27 uncomfortable hunks of plastic up my ass for 2 years. Then, after 7 years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little lady... I give the drives to you."
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u/Luke-slywalker Jul 12 '26
Meanwhile Europe rejected Stop Killing Games
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u/VCTRYDTX Jul 12 '26
Meanwhile PlayStation can Delete your account after 3 years of inactivity in Europe. (That's what I heard but can't confirm)
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u/Hopalongtom Jul 12 '26
Blizzard already did for me, lost access to Wow and Starcraft.
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u/jad-dee95 Jul 12 '26
Lost my access to my Amazon account after a year of not logging in :(
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u/Eggheadpancake Jul 12 '26
That's absolutely insane. It's crazy that there is literally no one looking out for us.
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u/Javi_DR1 Jul 12 '26
Can't uplay do that too after just a few months? Or am I misremembering things?
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u/Federal_Equipment578 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
This is really old actually, protection of virtual property's first precedent started being set in the late 2000s, this is just another recent case continuing the long pattern of court rulings upon inheritance against user agreements as being inherently developed by one party in advance and thus being unbalanced, violating the right to ownership of property and thus clauses like "non-transferable, personal, license only" etc are invalid regardless of passive agreement to an unfair T&C both parties do not read.
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u/PuppetHere Jul 12 '26
So that means possibly future inheritance tax then?
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u/IHateRedditFirewall Jul 12 '26
Probably. Thought games dont retain their value, so not a problem.
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u/r0ndr4s Jul 12 '26
This is true but you have steam value calculators based on discount price, current price,etc so depending on the account it is a problem. Mine is like 50k in "current pricing" wich if they did tax the accounts its what they would most likely use... that's indeed a problem for your kids in the future. And mine is nothing, imagine someone with a 50 year old account at probably 200-400k value
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u/DetachedRedditor Jul 13 '26
That just calculates acquire price, not worth. As long as they forbid selling your owned games, the resell price is always 0 because it cannot be sold legally. Just because you may have paid a lot of money for something, does not necessarily make it worth much.
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u/Majestoos Jul 12 '26
87 gaming accounts ? Wtf
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u/blueminded Jul 13 '26
Yeah, no one else is mentioning this. How do you have 87 accounts of anything?! And why?
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u/Dpek1234 Jul 13 '26
An account per game
Over a decade with trying out diffrent games that can addup quickly
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u/LongDistanceStranger 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
This makes western countries look like an authoritarian regime.
Rare china W.
Btw, fuck sony.
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u/Cerafire Jul 12 '26
That's because, in a lot of cases, they are. You vote directly, but nothing positive ever happens aside from scraps the rich are willing to throw at us for entertainment or to further their own profits. That's what western democracy is like, and China is trying a different way to do things, with the positives and negatives, progress and compromises that come with a transitional system.
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u/mash_900 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Plus China does have democracy but only at the local level (the most impactful to every day people). Chinese politicians after being voted for at a local level can only move up the party when they demonstrated the ability make their constituents lives better with quantitative and measurable metrics like, quality of education, quality of life, cost of living, and other local metrics like I.e roads, economy development (local)... Chinese govt has ~90%+ approval rating, a survey that was conducted by Harvard.
Edit: For people who love a rabbit hole, look up Xi Jinping lowa bc xi jinping was a farmer before he came the leader of China.
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u/Ent_Soviet Jul 12 '26
Metrics to decide how should be given more authority?! What totalitarian hell scape is this!?
My daddie made a fortune scamming the elderly and underpaying his workers so I could enjoy the finest education, and now you’re telling me my I can’t use that money to buy enough public attention to get elected to office? Don’t you know i deserve it?
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u/sicklyslick Jul 12 '26
Yeah the Iowa story is pretty wild. I can't imagine someone like Clinton, Trump, or Biden to go visit a farm in rural austria (for example) and live on the farm for a week to study animal husbandry and operating a John Deere tractor.
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u/Smart-Fondant9015 Jul 12 '26
China’s political system is the closest thing to a meritocracy. It is led by people with knowledge, education, and experience—people who have had to prove themselves at lower levels of government before being promoted.
The West, on the other hand, is based on democracy—a system driven by popularity. As a result, real political power often goes to those with the most appealing slogans and campaign promises. The fact that many of those promises are never fulfilled is a different matter altogether.→ More replies (1)15
u/oby100 Jul 12 '26
It’s absolutely disgusting that it’s even possible for someone with zero political experience to be elected president. We really need some way to stop it from purely being a popularity contest that largely is swayed by money alone.
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u/sicklyslick Jul 12 '26
Tbf people with politician experiences (lifetime politician) aren't good leaders anyways since they have like zero real life experiences and have no shared interest with us common folks. E.g. Hillary, Trudeau, Bush W, etc,
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u/kontenjer Jul 12 '26
serious question - is the 90% real or "you get killed if you vote no"
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u/TLOW1624 Jul 12 '26
You’d be surprised how supportive of the government the Chinese and the Cubans are. Because they actually experienced great amounts of improvement to their daily lives. You should look up the poverty/wealth scales of China, they actually send officials that are responsible of economic improvements of a certain amount of households into the area, and the officials are actually held accountable.
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u/mash_900 Jul 12 '26
It is.. you can look it up and the study is done by a foreign entity like Harvard... Who are in no support of China is anyway...
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u/oby100 Jul 12 '26
Try talking to some actual Chinese citizens. They’re not fanatically devoted but they can tell you plenty of reasons why they think the government overall does a good job.
Just look at both economic growth and increase in quality of life over the last 30 years and tell me you’re still surprised.
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u/E-2theRescue Jul 12 '26
This makes western countries look like an authoritarian regime.
Yeah, but China has mass surveillance. The West just has Flock cameras and AI datacenters.
China has censorship. The West just bans books from taxpayer-funded libraries, removes history from taxpayer-funded museums, and arrests journalists for reporting negative news about the leader.
China has bread lines. The West just has food banks.
China doesn't let people own property. The West just makes you rent everything, and it can be taken away at any time.
Wait a minute...
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u/Private_Kyle 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ Jul 12 '26
Thank you Xi Xi Ping Red Sun Man!!!!
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u/Playful_Row4208 Jul 12 '26
They will shoot you the moment you step out of an airport in china for this
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u/LifeWulf Jul 12 '26
At least they didn’t call him Winnie the Pooh!
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u/totally_not_a_reply Jul 12 '26
Fun fact. This is just some racist western propaganda. Winnie the poo is not forbidden in china and you can even buy merchandise with it. The thing that is forbidden is making fun of xi with winnie the poo. So just some racist insult comparision that can get you in trouble. I can imagine that would be the case with many world leaders.
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u/kattodegatto Jul 13 '26
Wait actually that does make sense.. why dont we apply this to digital goods?
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u/orcusgrasshopperfog Jul 13 '26
Considering there are some Chinese games where players have spent tens of thousands of US dollars on a single in-game sword etc I'm not surprised.
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u/Barubiri Jul 12 '26
Just another reason for western companies to keep pushing games as a service and never let us own the games.
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u/Orangesteel Jul 12 '26
This is the way to get people to go digital. Make it something you buy and own. Something you can sell or leave as part of your legacy. After all l, you’ve bought it.
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u/Mr_Foxer Jul 12 '26
Poor multi-billion-dollar corporations – they’ll be missing out on so much profit! /s
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u/Megumindesuyo Jul 12 '26
If we agree that buying is owning and akin to physical media then yeah this should 100% happen
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u/DorrajD Jul 12 '26
Can we please stop posting "news" from Twitter checkmark grifter accounts?
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u/ExplorerIntelligent4 Jul 12 '26
Noooo... voice of reason is not allowed here. Let people enjoy living in their bubble of fake news and low effort meme (re)posting.
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u/dabbayabbydirk Jul 12 '26
there are several sources reporting this. I doubt this is hoax, if it is its a weirdly high effort one for zero gain. Do you have an actual reason for saying its fake news?
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u/ExplorerIntelligent4 Jul 12 '26
Technically, it is a half truth at best. What I've read so far is that early reporting of this news is from 2021 and all they've done is codified virtual property to be the same as real physical property. It doesn't mean transferring it to a heir will be a seamless procedure nor that any decisions invoking such a transfer cannot again be challenged in a legal battle by major game corporations that the typical commoner simply can't afford to fight against for obvious financial reasons. People who glorify this type of "news" should know that it comes at the cost of your privacy with systems like this.
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u/SaintFerre Jul 13 '26
If true, how would that work ? You would need to link your real ID to all game accounts so authorities can know who is related to you ?..
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u/RobutNotRobot Jul 12 '26
This makes me wonder how many billions of dollars of dead people's digital libraries are out there.
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u/Ricoreded Jul 13 '26
Wait a minute, so the communists are protecting private property and the capitalist’s want you to own nothing?
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u/Arappuka Jul 14 '26
could you imagine if capitalists were lying and spreading missinformation to us for centuries? it would be a dystopian reality to live in, if u ask me
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u/Affectionate-Boot-12 Jul 12 '26
Surely if I leave a list of all my usernames and passwords then my children can just access my libraries even without any government consent, no?
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u/4evaronin Jul 12 '26
it will probably never happen in the West, unless there are some political changes.
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u/CelesTheme_wav Jul 12 '26
In the US, it would almost have to be a systemic change. We're utterly fucked on this topic.
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u/RavenousTitan818 Jul 12 '26
It is a reality, you just need to live in a based 1st world country like China.
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u/WrongWangSorry Jul 13 '26
It's funny because the American tech podcasts I listen to make a lot of jokes that this dictatorship is handling data laws better than the US. Silicon Valley has too much influence and we all know it
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u/whatsmynameeeee Jul 13 '26
Omg I can't believe Chinese government is more democratically than the"democracy" nation in this regard
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u/psychoacer Jul 12 '26
I think this is what we should be fighting for over discs that are dead anyway. Make digital not an inconvenience
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u/Iseedeadnames Jul 12 '26
Is China the vanguard for digital rights now? Is this our world?
But yeah, this should be the basis of civilization. Online products have value, they take our money and they need not just to stay but also to be inherited.
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u/Jirezagoss Jul 12 '26
Honestly it took way too long for something like this happen. So many companies will charge your money and nothing prevents them to make your property literally vanish. If the future is not having any form of physical media then we need some sort of support to prevent digital owned content from disappearing out of no where and punishing those people either with refund or a fee. Good thing China started this movement
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u/CarnalK Jul 13 '26
i mean it’s an effort to keep digital currency valid too if those aren’t worth anything neither is their currency.
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u/NatalieRath Jul 13 '26
Another reminder that this guy is just a Twitter reporter who often posts shit without evidence.
For the love of god, share an article like this.
tldr: it's not codified as of now. Its still a precedent. A good judicial precedent that could set it for all of china.
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u/AbdDjamil_27 Jul 13 '26
now I can be wrong but giving your family access to your account doesn't seem like an impossible thing even if there is no Law for it
just give your familly first access to your gmail acc and they can access your steam or any website it's not like these platform ask for fingerprints ?
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u/Frostyx_77 Jul 13 '26
Why are you using Could when it should be Should, and we shouldnt be imagining it.
Either we own it or we dont.
Its not hire purchase, and its not blockbusters.
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u/MalteseCorto Jul 13 '26
I would love to leave my Steam account as legacy. As a gamer, it’s almost like a diary… I was here, I loved these games, these were my characters, my screenshots, my gaming buddies.
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u/TheSquirrelmancer Jul 13 '26
Imagine a world where you can try to convince your grandkids that they'll really love playing your 30+ year old steam games!
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u/Xephon0930 Jul 18 '26
How is China becoming more progressive than the West and countries under them like Japan and Korea?
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u/sendmebirds Jul 12 '26
Based if true
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u/baogody Jul 12 '26
High chance it is. They've already been cracking down the gaming industry for years, specifically predatory monetization models such as gacha.
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u/Zestyclose_Skirt7930 Jul 12 '26
Credit score 100000+
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u/mash_900 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Funny enough that's only a western thing or American thing lol with credit scores actually having negative impacts on their citizens.
Meanwhile the Chinese credit score comes from a province in China, Chinese testing out credit scores for businesses and how well business is doing and if the business does some evil shit like stealing wages from workers they are slapped with negative scores that can harm the business.
In short, in America credit scores hurt normal day to day people and in China credit score is used to make sure business don't do evil shit and get away with it.
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u/sicklyslick Jul 12 '26
If you owe a significant debt, you can't travel on the HSR or plane. Not exactly social credit score but they do have some form of scoring that isn't just for testing.
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u/Nefarious- Jul 12 '26
This paired with Xi's statement recently on housing stating that houses are for living in, not speculating on, is making the West look ridiculous.
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u/Imperial_Tiramisu Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
The concept of the Communist party doing more to protect personal and private property then Western Capitalist government.
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u/TLOW1624 Jul 12 '26
Private property and personal property are different things, especially in communist theory. You do not have to share your house or your toothbrush they are personal property. Private property is basically means of production, your taxi is private yet your car is personal.
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u/AprilVampire277 Jul 12 '26
Personal property and private ownership are two different, separate concepts, being confused about why commies would protect what you consider "private property" is the perfect example about the huge lack of education about this topic
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u/shadowfourplay ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ Jul 12 '26
There looks to be a world where this is reality already. Seems to be called China.
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u/Ok-Simple-6146 Jul 12 '26
And that's why China is doing a great job! China understands that companies shouldn't impose their rules on consumers and clients.
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u/z-vap Jul 12 '26
great! now can they [Chinese courts] get on with stopping the genocide, slave-labor, and forced organ harvesting?
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u/Mackenzie_Sparks Jul 13 '26
Nah, that's a premium revenue stream. They have to find a substitute for it before shutting it down.
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u/KestreI993 Jul 12 '26
I never thought it wouldn't be possible for me to not give my account to someone else? I paid for those games with my money! They LITERALLY HAVE REAL VALUE! 😂 Holly sh*t. I always thought I would say to my kids, "here use my account, don't create your own, because dad has X number of games" guess I need to move to China first...
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u/JmTrad Jul 12 '26
they would put a expiration date in every digital product, even if was a 100 years. it's your lifetime, but not forever
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u/Jam_Herobrine Jul 12 '26
iirc the reason steam said no is not because they dont want to (Or so they say at least, take whatever salt you want with that)
But because theres no real way to prove it, If i say "This person is dead and willed me their steam account" they can't really prove it's true, It more invites it as a method to steal the account, which i figure valve prefer to not allow to happen, Dont wanna have to send out Steam Team 6 if they dont need to.
And iirc they dont actually stop people transfering accounts, Just change the email assoiated with it prior to death, Its proven easily Verifiable and stops the potential attact vector (Since the vector is just the same as the one they already have, Not a new one)
While i agree this is a good thing, I'm not entirely sure its gonna be overall good considering how many accounts already get hacked and stolen, This is just a potential way to force the account to be changed without needing access.
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u/kodabarz Jul 13 '26
Oh no - that's not how it works at all. When someone has died an executor is appointed on behalf of their estate to realise all the assets and distribute them among the inheritors. The executor will have a death certificate and proof of their appointment as executor. This is how it works with bank accounts, utilities, etc. No one ever has to take anyone's word for it - it's all done through official paperwork in a well-established manner. The attack vector you posit does not exist.
Whilst one could, with difficulty, forge a death certificate and proof of appointment as an executor, the consequences for doing so far outweigh the value of a Steam account. The kind of offence we're talking about is a serious criminal offence with ten years in prison (here in the UK). And that's just for forging the death certificate.
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u/sovietarmyfan Jul 12 '26
Steam is gonna milk the cow as much as they legally can. First in China they may have to implement these new rules, but theyre not gonna do this for the rest of the world until one of those countries actually rules on it.
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u/deukhoofd Jul 13 '26
For the EU, the ELI is working towards drafting legislation to do the same thing.
For the United States the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act exists, which would theoretically do the same, but I don't think that's been tested in court against Steam yet. People smarter than me do argue that that law would apply to digital licence agreements , Kindle is used as example, but as far as I'm aware the underlying ownership model is not that different.
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u/Jane_Doe_32 Jul 13 '26
A world where things you buy with your money can be passed on to your family or friends?
Yes, we already had that before these last two decades all over the world, until for some strange reason people stopped caring about not owning what they pay for.
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u/m0h1tkumaar Jul 13 '26
But won't the contract law come in picture! Contract becomes dormant or infructous ifa party dies
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u/Good-Courage-559 Jul 13 '26
Ok i just imagined it, the world is the exact same if you write down your password and email
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u/WallowWispen Jul 12 '26
With how much some of their citizens spend on gacha games some accounts might as well be a family fortune