You have no games in your Steam library. It’s as true now as it was when Valve’s now massive digital storefront went live in 2003. Now, Steam makes the truth transparent every time you buy a game. Valve has added a new message to your shopping cart before you click “proceed to checkout” that you are only getting a license to play the game on Steam and not a copy of the game itself.
The full message appears below the Steam shopping cart “proceed to checkout” option. It reads, “Purchase of a digital product grants a license to the product on Steam” then links to Steam’s Subscriber Agreement. In fact, Steam has repeated this several times about the ownership of the game on the Valve platform, but now it is made transparent every time you buy a new game.
IGN first reported on the Steam store announcement. It’s likely connected to a new California law that requires digital marketplaces to notify customers when they buy a media license rather than having a copy themselves. The law, dubbed AB 2426, requires online stores to state in plain language that “buying or purchasing digital goods is a license” and include a link to the company’s terms and conditions.
We will probably see digital storefronts next. Still, it’s worth noting that Steam — the platform that arguably started moving from physical games to digital titles — is the first to make this transition. Today, even owning a game disc doesn’t give you ownership rights to a copy of that game. There’s no guarantee that game publishers won’t kill their games and even remove them from players’ libraries. It’s happened before on PlayStation, and other Ubisoft’s owners The group they said it happened to them in April.
Last month, Valve opened up its Steam Family program to all older users, allowing gamers to share games on their Steam account with friends and family. This is intended to be used with “immediate family” in the same “family”, although there are currently a few restrictions on how you can share with friends elsewhere in the US Valve said it may change the way Steam Families works if they get it too. many users share too many accounts with people outside of their family.
Steam Families is not a solution to the game ownership issue. Some titles—especially multiplayer games—restrict users from sharing across platforms.
Sure, Valve has long promised that if Steam goes belly up, it will give you your downloadable games, but the truth is more complicated. Over the past two years, users on the Steam and ResetEra forums have posted responses from Steam Support suggesting that users cannot expect to pass their Steam libraries to their descendants or families after death. The support account has discovered that users don’t own their games at all, that they won’t merge accounts after your death, and that you can’t transfer libraries by will.
As previously mentioned by Ars Technica, the Steam subscriber agreement states, “You may not disclose, share or allow others to use your password or Account unless otherwise authorized by Valve… Therefore you may not sell or charge others . to obtain the right to use your Account, or to transfer your Account.”
This exact situation hasn’t happened yet, at least not publicly, although the “Valve-authorized” clauses suggest that the company respects who can transfer games to their accounts for any reason. In April, Ubisoft’s head of subscriptions said that players need to get used to being empty. Maybe the status quo isn’t something we should accept from Valve or anyone else.
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