What Happens to Your Digital Goods When You Die?

Here’s an eye-opening question: what happens to your digital goods when you die? If you have a closet-full of CDs, baseball cards, computer equipment or whatever else one might put in a will, it can be successfully transferred over to someone else after you die. Your digital goods? Well as you might imagine, it’s pretty difficult to hand over raw data – and that’s if the licenses allow you to.

According to analysis done by MarketWatch, both Apple and Amazon have licenses that do not allow you to transfer digital goods to another person – and after a quick check, we found the same rule with Valve’s Steam. Does that mean that when you die, the hundreds or thousands of dollars you’ve sunk into said goods goes with you? Essentially, yes – at least until the legal system catches up with us.

It’s been said that the legal system is light-years behind where it needs to be given our digitally-rich lives, but this is the sort of problem that should be at the forefront. It’s unlikely that any family member is going to like the idea of all the money you’ve sunk into your digital goods just disappearing – and who could blame them? It’d be one thing to gain access to said accounts if you know the passwords, but that doesn’t get you over the hurdle of making it legal.

The solution is easy: don’t buy digital goods. Alright, I lied… that’s not easy at all. Even boxed games sold at retail get locked into an account more often than not, so in some cases even hard media won’t matter. Whew, what a depressing thought.