There’s definitely a CEO whose bonus depends on hitting a certain number of PSN accounts. I can only assume account info is being sold because why else would they care? It’s either that or they eventually plan on charging PC players a monthly fee to play all their Sony games.
could also just be as simple as getting people’s feet in the door to their marketplace. if you already have an account maybe you’ll be fractionally more likely to buy other stuff in the store. multiply that by a few million or whatever… it’s not nothing.
Yea. Someone higher up at PlayStation (I forgot who, might have been the CEO) recently said that they believe PC gamers would buy PlayStations to play exclusive sequels to their PC games (like Horizon Forbidden west, which is not yet on PC). Forcing PSN accounts for their games on PC opens the door to getting a PlayStation just a little bit further.
Marketing. They want to increase PSN account numbers to increase their valuation, to have more data, and to make it easier for customers to move to their products/services since the account creation is already done.
Would be kind of funny to see the different stats that would change if a family was able to pass on the full account. Like maybe one child didn’t give a fuck about games (outside of just signing in here and there to keep it alive and update stuff like email and security) and no other activity. But then their kid goes hard into games and see the gaps of time. There would be lots of accounts that may have super awkward stuff like hentai visual novels. lol. But seeing some stupid high amounts of achievements and total hours of play time would be neat.
But not exactly shocking that these digital accounts would not have the ability to go much past your death. Unless we see the very deep change of all companies allowing people to remove a game and basically “gift” it. Which I can’t see happening. Even physically having discs/carts hits a limit after so long. Normal wear of use and the material rotting does mean it is likely those would also not survive past a couple of generations. And that ignores the same issues afflicting the consoles needed to play the media.
So basically the real solution to both the digital and physical passing games (or music/movies) is to rip DRM-less copies and keep the needed tools to either use the game without having the disc or needing to register to a server that is likely gone. Might be a good idea to leave ReadMe instructions along with the iso/rom and copies of the official and community patches that help with new OSes. After that it is basically just down to needing virtual machines or some other PC emulators to run old emulators.
Shame. It would be a good way to know if you are their favorite child lol. All joking aside, I think this is a compromise as others have alluded deep in comments. Valve likely doesn’t care or enforce it, but they don’t want to be responsible for account transfer due to games licensing and other legal shenanigans.
blockchain would solve a lot of these issues but IP owners and even steam likely, appear to be allergic to the idea of digital ownership. i wonder why?
Highly doubt this would hold up in court, but then again no one has challenged these digital market places. If you buy the game on their platform it should be legally yours and you can do what you want with it.
Same as any other illegality. It’s legal until you get caught. The account will work fine until for one reason or another it becomes obvious you’re not the original owner of the account, and then it’s banned. Billing changes, location changes, ip changes, confession, etc.
Maybe some generations later in the future it becomes suspicious. Valve want gain money and there is no reason that it will deep investigate if the downloads are still paid from the same account and paid with the same banc account, irrelevant if it’s from a different IP or ISP, that are things that can change even with the same user (transladet to other city, changing provider or PC, etc).
I can’t be the only one that puts their age as 1st Jan any random year in the 1920s instead of taking the time to put my real age in to view new games coming out. Steam already thinks I am near death.
I wouldn’t suppose that people are required to inform steam that they’re dead. Therefore, I’d assume the easiest way to bequeath games/DLCs, etc, is to get a wishlist from your loved ones, and then gift all of those games prior to death on a credit card that you might not be able to pay, due to being dead. Steam gets the money, the CC company gets shafted. Alternately, share your credit card details with a loved one and that list, and have them order within hours of your death (this depends on whether or not you were plausibly alive when those CC transactions took place)
About 20 years ago when it first came about this was also a question and Valve said they would “find a way” to unlock games for everyone. Now back then, that was when they only had Valve games on Steam, and a weird ninja game that I bought but never played, setting a president for all time…
They can’t, but if you don’t give you password and safety codes away before you die they can’t legally let you transfer ownership of the games. Just don’t tell them and arrange for all your emails, security keys, and 2FA keys to be safely transfered to your children.
Damn…makes me want to take the time to pirate games I already bought and own…
And then write it in my will that those who inherit my few earthly possessions have to play through each of my games at least once in front of a lawyer in order to receive their inheritance. Lol, I kid, 😂…or am I 😈?
Why is the cc-by-nc-sa license disappointing? Is your disappointment exclusive to version 4.0?
My only disappontment is with those humans (and humans who use ““humans””) who side with AI model using corporations that steal other people’s content to train said models for profit, over regular everyday people.
It’s probably they don’t want to dive nose deep into all individual cases and local shenanigans* about that and probable scams that can occur. You can take other person’s account if you have both password and email access, they don’t oppose that under the table, but they don’t want to be a party in account transit because it makes them responsible for that.
Is it legal what’s described in one’s last words, can these games be lawfully transfered as they are under both legal code and game licensing agreements? If there’s no more living relatives, would Steam transfer your purchases to the government? Or if the inheritance is disputable between two parties, should it decide anything there? They let anything happen as long as they aren’t involved.
As another poster alluded to, digital goods aren’t really considered property in the traditional sense. Digital property is protected under copyright (and other IP laws). The owner could sell the game, but then they wouldn’t own it anymore (e.g. when one game studio buys another, they are buying the games as well). Instead, they grant a licence to use the game, which is how Steam works as well.
If Steam let you transfer your account to someone else (e.g. bequeath or sell it), then they would need this in the licence (which they could do in theory). Other than the logistics of that (especially how to handle people selling accounts - and the scammers that inevitably come with that), the AAA publishers are unlikely to agree to those terms. Ultimately the Steam licence is likely a compromise between Steam’s vision and all the AAA publishers that wouldn’t publish on Steam if they didn’t get the licence they wanted. A bit like how Netflix doesn’t really care if you use a VPN, they just have to enforce it so studios will let them use their content.
Not really, and I’m guessing it’s part of their decision here since it could open them to possibilities they don’t like if they say that an account is an asset. It’s also probably fairly complicated, legally; they need to understand how estates are settled in every country they do business, open themselves up more to scammers, etc.
I doubt they’re going to enforce this if you were to give your credentials to someone else. They’re just not going to voluntarily provide the credentials for you.
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