You don’t own any games on your Steam library. It’s as true now as it was when Valve’s now-massive digital storefront went live in 2003. Now, Steam is making the fact explicit every time you buy a game. Valve added a new message in your shopping cart before you hit “continue to payment” that you’re only getting a license to play the game on Steam and not a copy of the game itself.
The full message appears below Steam’s shopping cart page’s “continue to payment” option. It reads, “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam” and then links to Steam’s Subscriber Agreement. Essentially, Steam has repeatedly reiterated this about game ownership on Valve’s platform, but now it’s made explicit every time you buy a new game.
IGN first reported Steam’s store notice. It’s likely connected to a new law in California that requires digital marketplaces to notify customers when they purchase a license for media rather than owning a copy themselves. The law, named AB 2426, requires that online shops provide in plain language “that buying or purchasing the digital good is a license” and include a link to the company’s terms and conditions.
We’ll likely see more digital storefronts following suit. Still, it’s significant that Steam—the platform that arguably began the move away from physical games towards digital titles—is one of the first to make this change. Today, even owning a game disc still doesn’t necessarily grant you ownership rights to a copy of that game. There’s no guarantee game publishers won’t kill off their games and even remove them from player’s libraries. It happened before on PlayStation, and some owners of Ubisoft’s The Crew claimed it happened to them back in April.
Last month, Valve opened its Steam Family program to all adult users, allowing gamers to combine the games in their Steam account with friends and family. This is meant to be used with “immediate family” in the same “household,” though there are currently few restrictions on how you can share with friends elsewhere in the U.S. Valve has said it may change how it operates Steam Families if it finds too many users are sharing too many accounts with people beyond their household.
Steam Families is not a panacea to the issue of game ownership. Some titles—mostly multiplayer games—restrict users from sharing them across platforms.
Sure, Valve has long promised that if Steam goes belly up, it will give you your games to download, but the reality is so much more complicated. Over the past two years, users on the Steam and ResetEra forums posted responses from Steam Support that suggested users cannot expect to pass on their Steam libraries to their descendants or families after they die. The support account established that users don’t own their games at all, that it won’t merge accounts after your demise, and that you can’t transfer libraries via a will.
As first previously by Ars Technica, Steam’s subscriber agreement spells it out with the statement, “You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve… You may therefore not sell or charge others for the right to use your Account, or otherwise transfer your Account.”
This specific scenario hasn’t come up, at least not in public, though the clauses “authorized by Valve” imply the company gives itself deference to who can transfer the games in their accounts for any reason. In April, Ubisoft’s head of subscriptions said that gamers needed to get more accustomed to not owning anything. Perhaps the status quo isn’t something we should accept from Valve or anyone else.
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