Ars Technica penned a piece a few weeks back about the legal quagmire awaiting people who hope to legally pass their Steam accounts on to the next generation when they kick the bucket. While it might seem a reasonable thing to add your valuable Steam account into your will, Valve has apparently refused to cooperate with those wishes, so you’re out of luck unless you want to pay a lawyer to fight one hell of a fight for the rest of us. Again, after you’re dead.
But of course, Steam isn’t the only thing to worry about here, as all of us play or have played multiple – maybe even hundreds – of MMORPGs and other online games, all of which have tons of money and time sunk into them. Plus, there are certainly other platforms that have been clear about cooperating with their customers’ estates. I most definitely have a system set up so that my husband and kids could get into my accounts and do whatever with those toons if I got hit by a bus tomorrow. Is it fully legal? Eh, not really, but that only matters if I get caught, and I’m dead, so do I care?
What happens to your MMO stuff – accounts, toons, etc. – when you die? Do you have a plan?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
