Estate planning as a Steam account holder
Valve Corporation accounts are forfeited when the account holder dies
(General customer service)
Steam is the largest PC gaming platform, operated by Valve Corporation. A Steam account can hold a digital game library (often worth thousands of dollars), Steam Wallet funds, Community Market items (CS2 skins, trading cards with real monetary value), Steam Workshop content, Steam Points and profile customizations, Steam Cloud save data, and membership in a Steam Family. The Steam Subscriber Agreement contains some of the most explicit anti-transfer language in the consumer software industry.
Steam accounts are forfeited at death under the program's terms. The terms explicitly state that accounts are not the account holder's property and cannot be inherited, transferred by will, or assigned through any estate planning mechanism.
Members can share accounts through Steam's family or pooling feature. Steam Families (launched in beta March 2024 and rolled out broadly September 2024, replacing the older Family Library Sharing and Family View features) allows up to 6 people in a household to form a family group and play games from each other's libraries. Each member has their own account, earns their own achievements, and saves their own progress to Steam Cloud. Members are classified as adults or children; any adult family member can manage invites and apply account restrictions, and adults can purchase games for children in the family. Adults can leave a family at any time but must wait 1 year from the date they joined the previous family before creating or joining a new one, so a vacated slot is effectively cooldown-locked for up to a year. Children cannot leave the family themselves and must be removed by an adult in the family or by Steam Support. Steam Families is the only practical estate-planning mechanism on Steam: if the deceased was in a family group, other members retain access to the shared library through their own accounts as long as the deceased's account remains active and in the family.
What happens at death
Steam has no published bereavement or estate process. The Steam Subscriber Agreement (last updated April 20, 2026) states: "Valve does not recognize any transfers of Subscriptions (including transfers by operation of law) that are made outside of Steam." It also states: "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..." The agreement further provides that "The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services," and that users "have no ownership interest in such Subscriptions." Accounts are described as "strictly personal." The phrase "transfers by operation of law" specifically encompasses inheritance and estate transfers. Steam Wallet funds are non-refundable and non-transferable and "have no value outside Steam," though unclaimed funds may be subject to state escheatment laws. The agreement contains no inheritance, estate, or death-specific provisions.
Planning your estate
Protecting Steam accounts while the account is active
No beneficiary designation, lifetime transfer options for accounts, and 7-step plan.
View details →When someone dies
Handling Steam accounts after a death
Accounts are forfeited under the official terms, 7-step process, and 2 required documents.
View details →Steam does not support beneficiary designations. Unlike bank accounts or investment accounts, there is no way to formally name a beneficiary on this type of account.
Frequently asked questions
Not through any official mechanism. Community Market items are license rights with no ownership interest. While the account is active, items can be traded or sold on the Steam Community Market, but proceeds go to Steam Wallet, not cash. There is no way for an estate to extract cash value from items outside of Steam.
Valve rolled out Steam Families in beta in March 2024 and to everyone in September 2024, merging and replacing the old Family Library Sharing and Family View features. The new system uses household-scoped family groups with adult/child roles, per-member saves and achievements, and a one-year cooldown on vacated slots. If someone references the older features, they now refer to Steam Families.
Steam's Privacy Policy does not specify an automatic dormancy-deletion period. It states data is retained only as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, with transactional data retained for up to 10 years to meet legal requirements. In practice, long-inactive accounts appear to persist indefinitely. Voluntary account deletion has a 30-day recovery window; after that the account is gone.
Sources
Data sourced from Valve Corporation primary sources (10 pages reviewed). How we research.
(General customer service)
