Passed Away...

[LadySilverHand]

My oldest son passed away back in 2021. I'm his mom and I'd like to know how I can contact someone at Steam, or Valve, about family access to deceased family member's Steam site. Me and my other two children have accounts here at Steam also. I've been searching for a contact at Steam/Valve about this issue with no luck. Thank you for any info you can provide me.

[nullable]

Originally posted by LadySilverHand:

My oldest son passed away back in 2021. I'm his mom and I'd like to know how I can contact someone at Steam, or Valve, about family access to deceased family member's Steam site. Me and my other two children have accounts here at Steam also. I've been searching for a contact at Steam/Valve about this issue with no luck. Thank you for any info you can provide me.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

Your Account, including any information pertaining to it (e.g.: contact information, billing information, Account history and Subscriptions, etc.), is strictly personal. You may therefore not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use) or as otherwise specifically permitted by Valve.

I'm sorry for your loss. I understand what you want to do and why it seems reasonable. I don't have an opinion on the matter I'm just relaying what is known based on what's n the SSA and numerous past inquiries on the subject of deceased relatives Steam accounts.

Accounts are not transferable, including due to death. Your son would have had to have provided you with the credentials to access it. You could try to recovery the account normally, but you would have to prove ownership. If you were unable to prove ownership, then you wouldn't get access to the account under any circumstances. Your son's death doesn't change the the SSA terms, or reduce the requirements to prove ownership.

[LadySilverHand]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by LadySilverHand:

My oldest son passed away back in 2021. I'm his mom and I'd like to know how I can contact someone at Steam, or Valve, about family access to deceased family member's Steam site. Me and my other two children have accounts here at Steam also. I've been searching for a contact at Steam/Valve about this issue with no luck. Thank you for any info you can provide me.

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

Your Account, including any information pertaining to it (e.g.: contact information, billing information, Account history and Subscriptions, etc.), is strictly personal. You may therefore not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account, nor may you sell, charge others for the right to use, or transfer any Subscriptions other than if and as expressly permitted by this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use) or as otherwise specifically permitted by Valve.

I'm sorry for your loss. I understand what you want to do and why it seems reasonable. I don't have an opinion on the matter I'm just relaying what is known based on what's n the SSA and numerous past inquiries on the subject of deceased relatives Steam accounts.

Accounts are not transferable, including due to death. Your son would have had to have provided you with the credentials to access it. You could try to recovery the account normally, but you would have to prove ownership. If you were unable to prove ownership, then you wouldn't get access to the account under any circumstances. Your son's death doesn't change the the SSA terms, or reduce the requirements to prove ownership.

Ok. Thank you very much. This is what I needed to know. I'll let my other family members know too.

[LadySilverHand]

Originally posted by clara:

Hi, my condolences.
Did you go to Steam support?

Hi, I haven't. But I'm not sure it's worth the try since the Steam contract doesn't allow for any type of transfer. Just discovered this from another poster's comment. So sad. Steam should create a way for family members to have access with the proof of a death certificate. Maybe they will in the future. Thank you for your concern.

[nullable]

Well keep in mind you don't need an ID or anything to create a Steam account and nominally there may be very little identifying information about a user associated with an account. So associating a death certificate with an account with very little hard ID associated with it wouldn't really work. You'd have to prove account ownership first to Valve's satisfaction with data they do have, and if you could do that you wouldn't need a death certificate.

And I think for a lot of users video games don't count as anything serious so they're not keen on handing over PII to Valve even if it would make account recovery easier. And Valve may not be interested in managing that data either.

[Aya]

I had some of my own questions regarding death, and I'm curious as to what happens if an account that's connected to a Steam family is deceased. Will the account simply just be disconnected upon news of the account owner being deceased, or will it still be linked to relevant accounts?

[nullable]

Do you think Valve is watching obituaries or something? And I mentioned that since Steam accounts don't rely on strong ID if John Doe dies, is it the same John Doe who owns the account or just a John Doe?

At any rate Valve generally isn't going to manage an account without a request from the account owner. Dead owners don't make requests. If someone can prove ownership Valve isn't going to go out of their way to argue they believe the owner is dead. Besides, many deceased Steam users haven't shared sufficient information for someone else to be able to gain control of an account.

Deceased users aren't really a problem Valve needs to manage.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by LadySilverHand:

Originally posted by clara:

Hi, my condolences.
Did you go to Steam support?

Hi, I haven't. But I'm not sure it's worth the try since the Steam contract doesn't allow for any type of transfer. Just discovered this from another poster's comment. So sad. Steam should create a way for family members to have access with the proof of a death certificate. Maybe they will in the future. Thank you for your concern.

They do.

Family sharing IS a thing and you can use this account normally.

Put it this way - Valve aren't heartless. In the past when this situation has come up, they've allowed next of kin and family members to carry on using the account. They just will not transfer it that's all.

It's all because of legal reasons.

They aren't going around checking obtiruaries for every user as they obviously couldn't possibly. So as far as they know, nothing has changed. Of course, yes, you've posted this here, but otherwise if you have the details you can carry on using it unless they say otherwise.

I cannot foresee them doing bad PR like saying "you posted that your son had died so now we're removing it" as that would be a nightmare.