To be absolutely clear, this is not new. Steam accounts being non-transferrable and not your property has always been how Steam's terms work. It's not even the first time the death situation comes up.
Because digital ownership sucks, and that absolutely, very much includes Steam. If you can't keep an offline copy you don't own it.
But honestly, given the new family groups Steam came up with this gets weirder now. Other accounts that are more closely tied to hardware are one thing, and I do wish we had a more effective and reliable way to hand over passwords and credentials to relatives in case of emergency, but it's so weird that now your mom can have an accident and you slowly see the games she was sharing with you over that system fade away as her account gets shuttered. It's such a grim, sci-fi distopian piece of minutia. This is not a great timeline we landed on.
To be absolutely clear, this is not new. Steam accounts being non-transferrable and not your property has always been how Steam's terms work. It's not even the first time the death situation comes up.
Because digital ownership sucks, and that absolutely, very much includes Steam. If you can't keep an offline copy you don't own it.
But honestly, given the new family groups Steam came up with this gets weirder now. Other accounts that are more closely tied to hardware are one thing, and I do wish we had a more effective and reliable way to hand over passwords and credentials to relatives in case of emergency, but it's so weird that now your mom can have an accident and you slowly see the games she was sharing with you over that system fade away as her account gets shuttered. It's such a grim, sci-fi distopian piece of minutia. This is not a great timeline we landed on.