Random: What Happens to Your Digital PSN Library When You Die?

You could just write your email and password on a notepad and give it to those you want to inherit it to.

He’s making a list,
He’s checking it twice,
He’s gonna find out if you’re dead or alive,
Hermen Hulst is shutting you down.

It'd be nice to have an option for the account to be memorialized with an official status, so online friends could know. There's a few online friends I never removed, even though they haven't logged on since 2008 on PS3 days. Maybe they passed away, outgrew gaming, busy with life, or are active on a new account? I don't think too deeply on it other than remembering the good times. Scrubbing the account would be like destroying a photo.

Yea a license is not inheritable. I do have a note for my brother in my living trust folder with my sign in info, but technically that breaks the terms of service.

A friend ask Sony to close her account. Years later am trying to add her from Xbox to cross play and her playstation account is still active.

you can pass on disc games when you die

What Sir HotGoomba said.

Rather than ask Sony to closed down your account or a refund, why not spread your loves for gaming to other people? It's not like these companies gonna bother to ask millions of people if they're still alive or dead either. What they only care is the account has activity (playing / buying games).

People don't fail physical,please.

This article came only hours after I noticed a tab in my iCloud settings where I can set a person to receive my account in the event of my death.

A bit morbid, but at least Apple seems to view things differently than gaming companies.

@InsaneWade One of my favorite gaming friends who I knew for 20 years passed away at 39 years old, just a year ago. It’s odd seeing his name on my PSN friends list, and our final chats in Discord. Those digital artifacts of his life will likely linger on as long as the servers remain.

Another good argument for physical. Unfortunately it will disappear with PS5 Pro or 6 or whatever will be next gen.

When it happens, I really don’t think I’m going to care much.

I will give my details to someone when i'm about to die.

not just games, but the vast majority of digital “goods” suffer this problem.
Lobby your MPs about this (or, timing being what it is, raise it with candidates on the doorstep). I’d love to see a change in the law requiring Apple, Sony, etc, to allow me to transfer my account in the event of my death.

I will be giving my details to my kids or my grandchildren. If Sony think my purchases are going in to a black hole they are very much mistaken 😂

Honestly this isn't spoken about enough 😔

Gen Z - You'll own nothing and be happy!

I think the biggest question is: will PlayStation actually be still around when we're old or just hitting our fifties?

Well, that’s a new thing to add to my will.

Do you think Sony will notice when in 70 years time it looks like I’m still gaming at 109 years old while my great grandchildren enjoy my then retro gaming collection?

The good news is, once you're dead, there's a good chance you won't care.

It's not just about what happens when you're dead.

It's killing the second hand market and the charity shop media corner.

I have friends who have lost movies "owned" on streaming services when that service lost the contract for that film.
And although with so many manufacturer owned software houses it's less likely with Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox games, it could happen and it's only a matter of time. And think about it.. You've bought this material but can only use it as long as you subscribe to PSN or in the case of movies, the movie streaming services.

I think they should ban use the word purchase, or own when buying digital content that relies on network connectivity either to use it, or install on another machine that might not have that connectivity.
Lease is a more appropriate word and will make the buyers of this stuff think about what they're actually buying.

What's more amazing is that anyone even thinks what happens when you die is news. Currently almost without exception we don't own digital content that we've bought. It's a mugs game.

@CVCubbington exactly. they don't get it... .

To be fair, what are the chances of your hardware lasting long enough for inheritance to be a question? If you have, say, a PS3, how likely is it that it’ll still work 50+ years later, or that it will even be compatible with modern TV’s (or whatever device equivalent we have then)?
Admittedly with PC stores like Steam and GoG you could make a decent argument for preservation and inheritance, but for those on consoles, it seems a bit moot to think about game libraries living beyond us, when they usually don’t last beyond the console generation they’re on.

Why the hell would I care, when I'm dead?
And same with physical. People can throw it in the bin, because I won't care.

Don't some physical games ship in a manner that they are not playable off the disc and require you to download the full game, or are in such a bad shape that a day one patch is required to make it playable?
Anything PS4 onwards disc or not, how long are those day 1 patches/game data going to be available to be make it playable? Modern "physical" isn't that much better and doesn't last forever (but arguably more than long enough)

And about not owning digital.
I can download backups of Steam games, and save them on a physical device forever. Same with GOG etc. Been digital on PC for 18 years now, and I haven't lost a single game. Even if Steam lose the license for a game, if I bought it, I can still download it from them.

Edit: Though sadly you can't make backup of digital games on PSN, to keep them safe on external storage.

@crypticc Do you not think this trend of requiring constant online connections, or having online-only save files, will continue and become more prevalent until discs are all but useless? Even now a large number of them are essentially just keys to unlock a download. Consoles even come supplied without disc drives now.

Year on year companies make it harder and harder to resell or share games. Physical is in its death throes regardless of what we do and there's absolutely nothing we can do as consumers to stop it. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but we're swimming upstream by fighting it. The same happened with music and movies. It is only a matter of time.

I'm taking all my digital games with me to Hell.

I'm sure that all the people that are scared of making an account in the first place will follow the rules and make sure to return their games to Sony after they perish.

@8bit4Life I think it was Bruce Willis who got them to change their policy a few years ago.

@Steel76 "Even if Steam lose the license for a game, if I bought it, I can still download it from them.

Though sadly you can't do this with digital games on console."

Not true - plenty of games can be redownloaded from PSN when the license expires, and that's true of others too.

@Gigawatt-Kapow "The same happened with music and movies. It is only a matter of time."

Not quite right. Music on physical media is seeing a huge resurgence and has been going that way slowly for years.

And it needs to because streaming is killing music, especially for smaller/younger artists. Physical media sales need to help fund careers as they did a few decades ago. Otherwise soon there won't be any good new music because it'll be even harder to sustain making it than it was pre-millenium.

Basically everyone needs to buy more games and music on physical media.

Honestly though, until something becomes a huge problem big companies don't tend to change their business model, so questions will only start being asked about why a really old account is active when that's happened regularly for years and they realise the accounts of the deceased are affecting their profits going forward so decide to stop it. Something like that.

To be honest, by the time most people have passed their game library will feature tons of very old games that will have been publicly available by preservationists for years. People moan about piracy but it often leads to preservation when often the companies that published games don't give a f**k so it has plenty of positives. I mean for what is still an active console, the PS4, due to jailbreaking you can already grab and use PKG versions of games you own for backup/archival purposes, including their patches/updates/DLC. So I think whether or not you're a physical media collector, you are still entitled to a working copy of the full game and can acquire one very easily.

Sooner or later, as digital becomes more and more dominant, there will be a push for legislation to allow the transfer of digital content licenses to a person's named heir upon their death. Just like with other things in life. The stance these companies have at the moment will then have to change, and so will their tune. I believe it's a matter of time.

@zekepliskin

Ah, forgot to add, that I meant downloading digital backups on PSN. I changed the post.

@zekepliskin Oh, I agree. I'm a musician myself and it's a constant uphill battle, so many people now simply stream all their entertainment and it feels kind of inevitable. I've got lots of physical games and my favourite albums are all on vinyl, but the general trend is definitely towards digital.

I die and as my kids go to take some solace in playing our favourite game one more time they realise the licence has been revoked, good job Sony

@zekepliskin I imagine they have a policy to cull accounts that haven’t been accessed in x amount of time. So in theory if you took a 5 year break from ps you may find your account gone.

@Robinsad actually it’s only 2 years

We may close your Account if it has not been used for at least 24 months

Nobody can stop you transferring any digital library. Good luck trying.

i already died when i got my first PSN account permanently banned

You will not bring the stuffs to other world when you die, so just let them go.

@Gigawatt-Kapow Same, I'm a musician, but honestly look where streaming has gotten us - a monopoly on "creativity" where only those with the means to support themselves or be supported by their parents/other benefactors results in a bunch of middle class kids with no problems writing bland dreck, and the only "gigs" being Ticketmaster drivel where you're paying £200+ for a crap seat. There is a tide change coming, and bands able to make physical media again and support themselves - those who believe in their music. Because otherwise in 20 years there won't be anything to see, so as The Who said, "a change it has to come".

@Robinsad Yeah I get that but I mean if you passed the keys to your account on to someone you love and it was still active, most big companies wouldn't bother to ask questions for a long time until someone realised that they could make more profit by culling the accounts under some pretense. They'd probably use ToS violation (impersonating someone else). Big companies always do this - they won't change their status quo until there's money on the line.

@SweetSummerShunv I am in my fifties

@FullMetalWesker I could die tomorrow and my kids would lose all their video games, seems a reason for caring, rather than some hypothetical where tech means we can no longer play anyway.

Or I can just give my username and password to someone and they can keep using it. Suck it, capitalism!

@zekepliskin Absolutely. Music, and other content, is made to please an algorithm, not for the listeners. I see live-service games as the equivalent of this in gaming.

Keep making tunes, comrade. You're not alone.

It's kind of crazy how Sony expects everything to fall into a black hole. This is why I'm for physical.

"Only in death does gaming end"

This really is such a first world problem.
I'm more worried about what Putin will do next, than what will happen to my video games. 😂

@Anti-Matter I get that but it would be nice if my loved ones could at least enjoy it. Who knows. Maybe they could find a connection or maybe comfort game because we played game X a lot.

Yet another reason to buy physical I guess 😂

This is a great article though! I've thought about this a lot 🤔

@Anti-Matter I mean, yeah. If you have no friends or family to pass it on to then it's not a worry.

@SweetSummerShunv "when we're old or just hitting our fifties?"

I hope my PS 5 last until Juli 24

Looks like I better make sure to put my username and password for my account and email in my will to make sure it doesn't go away lol

I’m just going to keep playing from beyond the grave. Buried with the PS5, a network and power cable and a screen in the headstone showing Corpse-Cam tm

I don't know how these companies would survive if you passed on your old, now heavily discounted (if even still for sale) games down to your loved ones. Bad policy.

It's all well and good saying just write email and password down but these days more and more companies demand you set up 2 factor authentication, I'll be leaving vast libraries on Steam, PSN and EA and my mobile phone haha

I still have old PC floppy disc dos games I can play. I only buy $5-$10 indie games digital, anything else is physical only.

Does it matter? Were all living in a simulation anyway... there is no spoon

Honestly it's kind of pointless even thinking about it. If you pass on your account details then Sony have no way of knowing, unless the person you pass it on to is dumb enough to tell them.

Even if you do, what is the likelihood that someone else will be inclined to go through your back catalogue of old games? If they're a gamer they will probably have their own and won't give a damn about yours. If they're not they won't care at all.

They certainly won't attach the same sentimental or financial value to it.

The reality is that it is insignificant.

Section 50A of the UK Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988:

“It is not an infringement of copyright for a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use.“

Sony’s EULA isn’t worth the bytes of the .txt file it’s typed on.

The law doesn’t just suddenly change because the software code is written to a server instead of a disc of some sort. If I have paid for software and have the receipts to prove it its mine to pass on as I see fit.

@8bit4Life I'm in almost the same situation. My cousin who was my best friend passed last year at 36 and I still have him on my friends list, messages and text thread on my phone. Strangely, his profile pic is him standing next to a skull, Shakespearian-like. I cherish these digital memorials.

@Gigawatt-Kapow @zekepliskin

👊🤘

@SoulChimera Hahahhaha 10/10 comment

Someone will eventually legislate for this an things will most likely change globally .

@trev666 <-- is now my dear friend!

@ApostateMage right, because you don't even have an option!

@Johnnycide Comrade!!!

@PerpetualBoredom STAND UP ALL VICTIMS OF OPPRESSION, FOR THE TYRANTS FEAR OUR MIGHT!

@Steel76 Putin knows what his boundaries are my friend. If he was going to do something to worry us then he’d have played his hand by now. Rest easy.

@SweetSummerShunv I'm 42, and I been on since PS1 in 1995. I also thought Sony was a phase, but its only picking up momentum. I'm 7 years from 50 (turn 43 this year) and i think this PS6 should be out in 6 years they said. Sony gonna be here in our 50s

@StrickenBiged Apple already has a feature known as Legacy Contacts. In their words: “A Legacy Contact is someone you choose to have access to the data in your Apple account after your death.”

You can also designate more than one Legacy Contact.

I’m putting it in my will that my dog gets my PSN account. Then if she dies, I guess my future children can have it. But my dog is probably immortal so good luck to them fighting that one out in doggie court

Soon all assets will be in the hands of the super wealthy. We will own NOTHING. You existance will obly be to supply your capital to the wealthy. Under their thumb. Paying their costs. No way of changing class or owning anything real.

This is the future. Convenience made us sleepwalk right into their trap.

We need to fight this and we need to tax the wealthy.

@RadioHedgeFund Speaking as a former Google Stadia user, I can only wish you good luck with that...

The same thing is when your account gets hacked your left with nothing good job I have over 2000 games physically

How is this even news?

If you ain't been living under a rock, then everybody should know that digital games are not yours. They are basically until you either delete your account, forget your password, move on from gaming or die rentals.

The whole point of digital for companies are so that everyone has to buy a copy to play.

They aren't your games never will be never have been, just a licence so you can play them.

Why would anyone think it will change just because that person dies.

Physical items are the only possessions you can hand down. Anything digital is gone with you.

@anubisvel The data in my Apple account is things like my photos, health data, etc, stored in iCloud.

I'm talking about digital purchases, like albums, films, and TV Shows (from the pre-streaming subscription days), apps, etc. I would like the law to be changed so that I can bequeath those items to my loved ones as if they were traditional chattels.

To everyone who thinks someone is going to want your physical game collection I have serval friends with boxes of n64 and ps2 games that will never be touched again. Just let it go. Outside of a very small group of people no one wants your toys.

@B0udoir Nobody will care about physical old games in decades apart from collectors. Why are some people here acting as if current games won't be retro by then with compilation releases?

This isn't mentioning emulators or, you know, piracy.

@TruestoryYep Why people are thinking that they will die in decades from now? My uncle died from heart attack, took 1 minute. Another uncle died from lung cancer a couple of months after diagnosis. My sister in law died from bowel cancer literally once month after diagnosis. There was a student in my company who died from leukemia at 22 years old. He was fine a couple of weeks before. Unfair and harsh, but it happens. The management of your digital assets and footprint is a serious question. Taking over an account of someone no longer here is a pain.

@Johnnycide Nothing to lose but our shackles!

@DestructionAllstars hook me up please!