What happens to your Steam account when you die? - Here's A Thing

Chris Bratt delves into what happens to your Steam account once you die, discovering that you can't easily leave a digital library to a friend or loved one even if you were to write it into your will.

Animation & illustration work: Anni Sayers

Music: Stardew Valley

[thecastawaydc]

Just done a quick calculation and I've spent around £1500 on steam games in just over 3 years...That's nearly 4 months of my mortgage payments! Ouch.

Incidentally an Ice cream van just past my house playing the star wars theme. Not relevant to this video, but thought you should know.

[Gerpar_]

1987: I wonder what happens when we die.
2017: I wonder what happens to my videogames when I die.

[SheddyTV]

my older brother died back in august 2014, and never told me his account details, but in 2010 he tought me that firefox was terrible because if you save a password you can litterally see what the password is just by going through the settings, and because he taught me that 4 years prior to his death, i found his email account details and got access to his old steam account.

the issue with having access to the account is that i just start tearing up everytime i log into it, so i cant really do much with the account... it just.. exists.. for no reason...

[Nasarex]

"Can't sell your account"

*thousands of Steam accounts sold every day*

[grantmanor]

A steam account should be an inheritance, or it should just operate off of the Ron Swanson principle of transferring ownership to whatever man or beast kills you.

[Beyluta]

A simple folder named "Open when I die" somewhere on your Desktop would suffice

[Pathologic]

*couph* *couph* "come her my son..."

*son walks up* "Yes dad?"

*couphs* "I have something for you my child. It is something I have always cherished in my life."

*son begins to tear up* "what is it dad?"

*gives piece of paper to him* "I give you my steam name and password... Cherish it always... My son... O and I bought House Party for science reason..."

*son begins to cry* "I understand Dad. For science reasons..."

*couphs and dies* "Ded"

*son* "FOR SCIENCE REASONS!!"

[killedkennys]

Saw this video and thought of you buddy. Hate staring at that last online 600+ days ago and knowing you won't be on again

[Dampler]

How weird would it be that eventually everyone that is using steam at this moment will die and there will just be a bunch of ghost accounts that people will discover?

[Twatical]

Just give it your mate, it's like the "Please purchase winrar message", a single fence, walk around it.

[joshmartin]

I’m more concerned with what happens to my account when Valve goes under.

[needhelp]

Id like to leave my account to my children. You know like in movies where the kids fight over the fathers legacy like a business or a peace of land, i want my kids to fight like that for my account.

[DrewColpurs]

He addresses the "just leave your password" a couple times, the point is that that's a janky, technically illegal loophole to the system. And like the guy in the video says, Steam probably won't find out, but the fact that there's no official, legal way to handle this is concerning.

[killercloud]

I spent about 2500$ on my accout over 8 years. Its brought me most of the joy in my life, and I would want nothing more than to pass it on.
Having it go poof would sadden me greatly.

[mortaljohn]

I've spent upwards of $4000 on my steam account, and am planning on making sure that my collection is gifted properly after my passing. It's not even about the cost. The amount of time and effort involved in building up a game collection of this magnitude, I refuse for these games to be lost into the aether.

[lukasd]

"My House goes to my son Willy.
And My steam accound with My 65 Unusual hats a 8 Knifes goes to my daughter sara"

[gummycoregamer]

I am more interested in what happens when Valve dies. There ought to be a central body, sort of a Library of Congress, that hosts all the games and ownership info, to protect the rights of the consumer as games are moving quickly to digital downloads.

[theimmux]

You get a notification saying:

"Oops, it looks like you have died. Contact the Steam tech support for advice."

Of course

[MaxwellTornado]

Well, here's the thing: You shouldn't be thinking along the lines of the *account.* The account doesn't have monetary value. The games in it do. Simply put, you should be able to transfer things between accounts.

[Cewyah]

But my brother with a thousand steam games let me use his account before family share existed won't say who but, his account still exists!! :(
He says don't cheat on multiplayer games because he really doesn't wanna get vac banned though.