Resetting account of a deceased family member

[RabidJade]

It has been a couple of years since my late wife passed away. She had her own Steam account with an extensive amount of games she purchased. I have full access to the account and the email account/phone her account is registered to. However, I wish to let my nephew use this account and he is new to Steam and enjoys a lot of the games in her collection. The problem is she had an extensive amount of personalizations in the account such as the username, game saves, gaming profiles and such. I still have to review the TOS if I can at some point transfer or give the account to him but that is a question for another discussion.

Now my question, can all of this metadata be reset to some type of factory default?

The times he has logged in to look at the games she has, it has bothered him with the memories that certain aspects of her account still contains. Also, although I removed all of her friends from her friend list, he still has people sending him messages about what's he doing on her account, who is he, is she really dead, so forth.

Sorry if this is in the wrong area. I've done a a lot of research on this and can't find any solid answers on this issue.

[The Giving One]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RabidJade:

I still have to review the TOS if I can at some point transfer or give the account to him but that is a question for another discussion..

Account transferring is a violation of the SSA, that agreement you mention here, unless specifically authorized by Valve. The topic of accounts being legally willed to a surviving loved one has come up here often, and would be up to support to help you with that.

You cannot change the playtime on game, but if you are asking about the posting history on the account, that would also be up to support to delete or "reset" the account, if that is even possible.

EDIT..

Here is one thread where it was discussed before, as well as a relevant post containing a linked reply from Support......

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/350540974003301631/?ctp=3#c350540974008375213

Original post.....

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=26373372&postcount=13

Originally Posted by Steam Support
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

This type of situation is resolved on a case by case basis.

It is against the Steam Subscriber Agreement to buy, sell, or trade a Steam account; however we are happy to work with the respective legal parties if this unfortunate event occurs.

If you have any further questions, please let us know - we will be happy to assist you.

Here is another one where the user had a brother pass away......

http://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/135513549092179851/

From that thread.....

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/490123938441417365#c490123938441692380

Początkowo opublikowane przez erλm:

If the steam account is willed to you you can change ownership. Steam support/VALVe have mentioned several times in the past they wouldn't block this change of ownership.

[Washell]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RabidJade:

I still have to review the TOS if I can at some point transfer or give the account to him but that is a question for another discussion.

Not really, because if the TOS bans it, which it does, it logically follows there's no reason for Valve to implement systems to remove the personalization. So it really should be the first step.

[Darren]

As has been indicated Valve doesn't supply this functionality as it's not allowed for transfers to take place in general.

In the case of deaths Valve has generally worked with the parties involved and helped them recover the account (although any changes to the account after that are up to the parties involved i.e. you would have to manually adjust the account yourself or have your nephew do it).

Valve can't really stop people being curious and asking about what happened to your wife however if you clear the friends list, and restrict profile comments to only friends and just have your nephew not add anyone to his friends list he doesn't know they won't be able to contact him anymore (they will still be able to find the account in-game as once they have the unique ID for it they can always find it, but it should block most communication). Making the profile private will make it even less likely that they will be able to contact him in any way.

[RabidJade]

I have no issues keeping ownership of the account. Also the former friends contacting her account through IM's I guess isn't a big deal either as it will eventually fade away with time. It just makes it hard for all of us when this happens.

I guess my my main focus for the reset are two things:

1. Her account name. She used her first and last name in it, this makes it awkward for us to log into it and is essentially a reminder of what happened.

2. Her saved games/characters and in-game personalizations. Games like Borderlands keep these saved including the characters she created. I'm not worried about the amount of time played, achievements and such.

If I could get those two or even #1 reset to something neutral, it would make life a lot easier. I could go into the games and delete the characters but figured Steam could reset these in the cloud a lot easier.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

1. account names are permanent.

2. steam cloud saves games. if you want to reset this turn off cloud saves and start new games.

[2cat4u]

I'm terribly sorry to hear about your loss.
You should be able to set up family sharing between your wife's and your nephew's accounts. That way your nephew can play most games that she has without claiming ownership, and I don't think there would be any way for other users to establish a link between those two accounts.

[RabidJade]

Thank you 2cat4u, I think that is our only option.

It's sad that a company like Valve wouldn't have mechanisms in place to sanitize or allow transfers of an account for situations like this.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

no company allows the transfer of ownership of accounts without going through proper legal channels.

[The Giving One]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RabidJade:

Thank you 2cat4u, I think that is our only option.

It's sad that a company like Valve wouldn't have mechanisms in place to sanitize or allow transfers of an account for situations like this.

If they did, it would be abused sadly. And not all games can be family shared. That is why the SSA says "unless specifically authorized by Valve", in the case of account transfers of ownership.

[Darren]

As has been indicated before nominally even a transfer like this is against the terms of service (and Valve would be within it's rights to terminate the account should they discover it is no longer being controlled by the original creator).

As a result they don't need any such ability to sanatise the account. Also the main thing you want changed is absolutely the last thing they will ever allow to be changed (it's the main key in the database, it's used when recovering a stolen account, etc).

[RabidJade]

I have no issues retaining ownership of the account. I might need to contact Steam/Valve directly regarding the account name (if I can even find out how). If they don't have a mechanism in place for account name changes or account sanitization hidden away then I would be a bit shocked.

I can understand if it is a kid that is mad at his brother for TK'ing him in some game. However I have the legal documentation and also online records of my wife's death that I can provide proving that I'm not a scammer or troll. I've had her account name changed in other gaming/online systems already, I'm sure Steam/Valve can do it here as well.

Logging in with her first/last account name is a bit gut wrenching each time, even if it is for family sharing.

[Snapjak]

Account name changes have been requested for almost as long as Steam has been around. Just ask anyone with the original email address as a login. It's not there, and likely won't be there.

If your PC is secure and no one else has access to it you can simply make a shortcut to Steam itself with the -login %u %p argument so you don't have to actually type anything.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Command_Line_Options#Steam_.28Windows.29

[Darren]

Again I'm not saying you are currently having issues with that I'm saying right now Valve can if they so choose legally terminate your deceased wife's account (the licenses are non-transferable).

As for account name changes no Valve really really can't, the way the system is setup on the backend it is just literally impossible for them to change account names (they have indicated this multiple times when asked about this for a number of reasons).

If you are using family sharing you would have to login with her account once to authorise the sharing of the games on the PC in question with the Steam account on that PC, then your nephew would be able to play all of her sharable games without needing to login as her ever again.

[BossGalaga]

Początkowo opublikowane przez RabidJade:

It has been a couple of years since my late wife passed away. She had her own Steam account with an extensive amount of games she purchased. I have full access to the account and the email account/phone her account is registered to. However, I wish to let my nephew use this account and he is new to Steam and enjoys a lot of the games in her collection. The problem is she had an extensive amount of personalizations in the account such as the username, game saves, gaming profiles and such. I still have to review the TOS if I can at some point transfer or give the account to him but that is a question for another discussion.

Now my question, can all of this metadata be reset to some type of factory default?

The times he has logged in to look at the games she has, it has bothered him with the memories that certain aspects of her account still contains. Also, although I removed all of her friends from her friend list, he still has people sending him messages about what's he doing on her account, who is he, is she really dead, so forth.

Sorry if this is in the wrong area. I've done a a lot of research on this and can't find any solid answers on this issue.

There is no "reset" as you have described that I'm aware of. The account user name cannot be changed under any circumstances. That said, you should never publicly share an account's user name. This should be kept private.

The username you use to login with and the one you display on your Steam profile should be different. This is a security measure.

If as you state, you have full access to the account then you can change the username displayed on the Steam profile and you can pretty much blank out the Steam profile. If you want to remove saves, they must be removed from the computer or deleted from the cloud or simply create a new save file if you're playing a game with cloud save features.

As far as comments on the account, you can set the privacy options under the profile/privacy settings so only friends can comment.

If you wish to address the issue of the deceased, you can put a note in the profile summary.

You may find people are still skeptical regardless. This is because people have created fake personas and faked deaths on Steam before, either to induce drama or to solicit sympathy or sometimes simply just to beg for free stuff because there are terrible people on the internet and in online gaming communities in general.

[The Giving One]

If you have all the legal documentation as you have said, my suggestion would be to use support and gain total use of the account, as explained above, as they have allowed this in the past according to what has been posted.

You surely will not be able to change the login name on the account, but you otherwise would get full and totally legal control over the account in accordance with the SSA.