GOG will let you bequeath your game library to someone else as long as you can prove you're actually dead
GOG will let you bequeath your game library to someone else as long as you can prove you're actually dead
Accounts aren't transferable but GOG is willing to make it happen, with a little help from the legal system.
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Title of PCGamer's article is misleading, they want a court order to do it. Proof of death is not enough.
"In general, your GOG account and GOG content is not transferable. However, if you can obtain a copy of a court order that specifically entitles someone to your GOG personal account, the digital content attached to it taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it, and that specifically refers to your GOG username or at least email address used to create such an account, we'd do our best to make it happen. We're willing to handle such a situation and preserve your GOG library—but currently we can only do it with the help of the justice system."
They have to do that anyway. Court orders overrule a company's policies in most (all?) legal systems.
The fuck do they mean they will try?
"Oh no there's no way we could possibly break out of these invisible shackles we put on ourselves"
The whole thing is vaguely and noncomittally worded, it promises basically nothing.
Take this bit for example:
taking into account the EULAs of specific games within it
In other words: talk to the individual publishers of each game and get their permission :P At which point GOG's involvement is almost irrelevant, if you have the publisher's consent then they might as well give you a copy.
It's legal speech for "we want to however if we straight out say we're going to do it no studio is going to want to release games on our platform"
No, it is legal speech for "we think you want that and we think you are dumb enough to believe we can actually deliver that so lets give it a try to pretend we are doing that".
Being as it's GOG that's saying that, I don't agree with that statement, if it was any other company out there I would fully agree with it, but that statement goes against the core values of what they've built gog of from the point of creation.
They know that if they did try to push something like that without a court order that no studio is going to want to release, because let's be real they're already struggling finding Studios to want to release on them without any form of DRM,
About time they publicly released that on death we're going to transfer every license over to another person by request without a requirement to go through the game studios itself, almost every Studio on their platform is going to withdraw their licensing to Gog to distribute the game, because that is less money in the company's hand because they want each generation to buy their games, because less people buying the games means less money in their pocket.
With this method they can state "hey we're following the legal system we have a court order saying to hand over the keys, our hands are tied" which from a business point of view is a lot more understandable then "We are going to allow giving away your game to free on death to the next person in line"
But my point is that you are not going to get that court order so they suggest a scenario that is totally unrealistic. No court is going to order a game store to transfer an account.
there has been a few cases (with steam) of having a court issue an order on death to transfer the library, but yea it does not happen as common as it should
Isn't this the same with any asset for probate? In the UK, you cannot just hand them a pinky promise IOU. If the person has 4 kids and a wife, who gets the steam library? Courts decide this.
I would assume that court orders and proved wills have different levels of coercion when you present them to someone like GOG? Dunno. Each country probably has its own rules, including fun complexities like whether or not GOG was a party to the process or not.