6 ms·

I can't think of a single rationale for this. A user account isn't much more than a database entry. What possible reason could a company use to justify this?

gmerc 3y ago
Remember that EA had EA downloader around the time steam came around. However, their packaged goods division, who made most of the profit, saw it as infringing at their KPIs and someone pushed the inane idea it could make more money if it just allowed you to download the games you bought a fixed number of times to keep the project from getting killed.
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  The EA Downloader was released 3 years after Steam.
  - gmerc 3y ago
    I think that counts as “around”. steam took a while to materialize on everyone’s radar as more than an orange box installer and it took a while to get downloader off the ground
jabiko 3y ago
Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change. Its just a guess on my side what a possible rationale may be. Its equally likely that someone just put in a feature request for account expiry without really having a good reason and fully understanding the consequences.
- mcny 3y ago
  > Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change. My Yahoo! Mail account is from about 2001 and I still select “I’ll do this later” when I sign in on a new device. I think whatever new owner buys us next has to continue this.
  - fieryskiff11 3y ago
    while im 95% sure you know, Yahoo's web client is or at least used to be open to a lot of exploits. Be safe with these dinosaur email providers :)
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Yahoo will also clear your entire account if you don't log in for a while. Happened to me. Lost all my old emails from high school. Sure, that's on me for not having my own local backup, but they still did it with no warning that I ever saw.
    - mcny 3y ago
      I'm so sorry to hear that. :( I tried it out on an alternate Yahoo! email address that I don't need and sure enough I got this message > Setting up your mailbox > A fresh mailbox is being created, since the old one was inactive for more than 12 months. https://i.imgur.com/VMHxeyH.png https://i.imgur.com/VMHxeyH.png thank you for the heads up
sh4rks 3y ago
Cloud saves maybe? Those can take up a lot of space.
- dividedbyzero 3y ago
  Then expire just those, that would be a lot less controversial.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ivan_gammel 3y ago
Billing information = PII, so it is subject to privacy regulations. In many jurisdictions the law allows to store and process PII no longer than needed. If an account becomes inactive and all other retention deadlines expire, keeping the data may be a violation. To be on the safe side and to satisfy users I would allow users in such cases to download the digitally signed account data and offer the possibility to upload it again.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Shank 3y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. This makes sense if the account is inactive and has no active licenses to it, but like, if you buy game X with whatever the industry-current licensing is, and the expectation is that you have a license as long as you have an account, termination is silly. You have an active agreement (i.e., the license) to use the product. That's a contractual/business relationship. You could just as easily delete all of the PII in the account by sending someone an email saying "your licenses are now attached to these codes, please use them to reactivate your licenses with a new account if you want to access them" but they don't. They just delete them. There are many ways to square this circle.
  - ivan_gammel 3y ago
    If you can prove that there is a person with the access to the account and it was the intent of the buyer for this person to have access, then fine, account can be kept. The email notification they send is proving exactly that.
    - jstanley 3y ago
      You have it backwards. Only if you can prove that there is not a person with access to the account and intention to access it can the account be deleted.
      - 3y ago
cinntaile 3y ago
Steam did something similar a while back. You had to log in and choose a new account name when they decided email addresses weren't suited as account names anymore, if you didn't your account got purged.
- eropple 3y ago
  Didn't that just park your account until you changed it? I don't remember seeing anything about it deleting your account, and I can't find it now.
- frederikb 3y ago
  When did that happen? I still have my OG Steam account with an email address as username which is now 19 years old. I was never prompted to change that, even though I would definitely like to. I would appreciate any insights you might have.
  - cinntaile 3y ago
    I can't remember any specifics I'm afraid, it was probably 10+ years ago. I remember being prompted to change it (either by mail or in the client), I never did and I never logged in either. The account is gone. Since it was that long ago I can't rule out simply misremembering.
- knome 3y ago
  Steam account names are immutable. I don't recall them ever offering to let you change the login name. Change the username? Sure. Change the email associated with the account? Yeah. But if you've got a near 20 year old steam account, you're still logging in with whatever email address you had near 20 years ago.
grog454 3y ago
> I can't think of a single rationale for this. I can: MAU
- ironSkillet 3y ago
  This. Some middle manager is salivating at the KPI boost they can put in some monthly report as a result of this.
bombcar 3y ago
Long term everyone is dead. If these companies continue to exist, how do they handle this? Will Valve maintain your steam login waiting hundreds of years for a user who will never login? It’s an interesting question and it has never been directly addressed, though Facebook and similar have enabled memorial pages. I could see a service like steam allowing a death certificate and closure resulting in a $10 refund so they don’t have to maintain the database entry.
- eviks 3y ago
  Why not? It's not like they'll accumulate many billions of users in that timeframe, so the costs won't skyrocket or anything Facebook is different on that an account can have a lot of data
- TillE 3y ago
  Data for a million accounts takes up about as much space as maybe a single long YouTube video. I mean, you can move inactive accounts to a separate table or something if you really want a small performance optimization. Delete them after 20 years. This is a very slow, very long-term problem.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The cost to maintain the database is actually a small part of it; a large question is reducing the "surface area" against attacks as best you can. Perhaps for steam this doesn't matter, but forums, etc have issues with old unused accounts being hacked and used for spam, etc.
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      You could lock the account and require a higher standard of proof of identity to recover it (e.g. you prove who you are and steam runs a credit report on you and validates your prior phone numbers and addresses against authorization and billing information that they have for the account--that would increase the barrier to require identity theft which is unlikely to be used just to take over steam accounts and spam).
dahfizz 3y ago
From their support page[1], > we may immediately close inactive accounts to comply with local data protection legislation I'm not sure if that's actually what their lawyers think, or if blaming GDPR is a convenient excuse. The fact that no other company seems to do this makes me think they know its BS. [1] https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-of-inactive-ubisoft-accounts/000079595 https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-o...

gmerc 3y ago

Remember that EA had EA downloader around the time steam came around. However, their packaged goods division, who made most of the profit, saw it as infringing at their KPIs and someone pushed the inane idea it could make more money if it just allowed you to download the games you bought a fixed number of times to keep the project from getting killed.

freddie_mercury 3y ago
The EA Downloader was released 3 years after Steam.
- gmerc 3y ago
  I think that counts as “around”. steam took a while to materialize on everyone’s radar as more than an orange box installer and it took a while to get downloader off the ground

jabiko 3y ago

Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change. Its just a guess on my side what a possible rationale may be. Its equally likely that someone just put in a feature request for account expiry without really having a good reason and fully understanding the consequences.

mcny 3y ago
> Maybe they updated their TOS to allow them to do something new with the users data (selling it, storing it in another region, etc) and they want to get rid of accounts that haven't accepted the change. My Yahoo! Mail account is from about 2001 and I still select “I’ll do this later” when I sign in on a new device. I think whatever new owner buys us next has to continue this.
- fieryskiff11 3y ago
  while im 95% sure you know, Yahoo's web client is or at least used to be open to a lot of exploits. Be safe with these dinosaur email providers :)
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Yahoo will also clear your entire account if you don't log in for a while. Happened to me. Lost all my old emails from high school. Sure, that's on me for not having my own local backup, but they still did it with no warning that I ever saw.
  - mcny 3y ago
    I'm so sorry to hear that. :( I tried it out on an alternate Yahoo! email address that I don't need and sure enough I got this message > Setting up your mailbox > A fresh mailbox is being created, since the old one was inactive for more than 12 months. https://i.imgur.com/VMHxeyH.png https://i.imgur.com/VMHxeyH.png thank you for the heads up

sh4rks 3y ago

Cloud saves maybe? Those can take up a lot of space.

dividedbyzero 3y ago
Then expire just those, that would be a lot less controversial.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ivan_gammel 3y ago

Billing information = PII, so it is subject to privacy regulations. In many jurisdictions the law allows to store and process PII no longer than needed. If an account becomes inactive and all other retention deadlines expire, keeping the data may be a violation. To be on the safe side and to satisfy users I would allow users in such cases to download the digitally signed account data and offer the possibility to upload it again.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Shank 3y ago
This doesn't make any sense. This makes sense if the account is inactive and has no active licenses to it, but like, if you buy game X with whatever the industry-current licensing is, and the expectation is that you have a license as long as you have an account, termination is silly. You have an active agreement (i.e., the license) to use the product. That's a contractual/business relationship. You could just as easily delete all of the PII in the account by sending someone an email saying "your licenses are now attached to these codes, please use them to reactivate your licenses with a new account if you want to access them" but they don't. They just delete them. There are many ways to square this circle.
- ivan_gammel 3y ago
  If you can prove that there is a person with the access to the account and it was the intent of the buyer for this person to have access, then fine, account can be kept. The email notification they send is proving exactly that.
  - jstanley 3y ago
    You have it backwards. Only if you can prove that there is not a person with access to the account and intention to access it can the account be deleted.
    - 3y ago

cinntaile 3y ago

Steam did something similar a while back. You had to log in and choose a new account name when they decided email addresses weren't suited as account names anymore, if you didn't your account got purged.

eropple 3y ago
Didn't that just park your account until you changed it? I don't remember seeing anything about it deleting your account, and I can't find it now.
frederikb 3y ago
When did that happen? I still have my OG Steam account with an email address as username which is now 19 years old. I was never prompted to change that, even though I would definitely like to. I would appreciate any insights you might have.
- cinntaile 3y ago
  I can't remember any specifics I'm afraid, it was probably 10+ years ago. I remember being prompted to change it (either by mail or in the client), I never did and I never logged in either. The account is gone. Since it was that long ago I can't rule out simply misremembering.
knome 3y ago
Steam account names are immutable. I don't recall them ever offering to let you change the login name. Change the username? Sure. Change the email associated with the account? Yeah. But if you've got a near 20 year old steam account, you're still logging in with whatever email address you had near 20 years ago.

grog454 3y ago

> I can't think of a single rationale for this. I can: MAU

ironSkillet 3y ago
This. Some middle manager is salivating at the KPI boost they can put in some monthly report as a result of this.

bombcar 3y ago

Long term everyone is dead. If these companies continue to exist, how do they handle this? Will Valve maintain your steam login waiting hundreds of years for a user who will never login? It’s an interesting question and it has never been directly addressed, though Facebook and similar have enabled memorial pages. I could see a service like steam allowing a death certificate and closure resulting in a $10 refund so they don’t have to maintain the database entry.

eviks 3y ago
Why not? It's not like they'll accumulate many billions of users in that timeframe, so the costs won't skyrocket or anything Facebook is different on that an account can have a lot of data
TillE 3y ago
Data for a million accounts takes up about as much space as maybe a single long YouTube video. I mean, you can move inactive accounts to a separate table or something if you really want a small performance optimization. Delete them after 20 years. This is a very slow, very long-term problem.
- bombcar 3y ago
  The cost to maintain the database is actually a small part of it; a large question is reducing the "surface area" against attacks as best you can. Perhaps for steam this doesn't matter, but forums, etc have issues with old unused accounts being hacked and used for spam, etc.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    You could lock the account and require a higher standard of proof of identity to recover it (e.g. you prove who you are and steam runs a credit report on you and validates your prior phone numbers and addresses against authorization and billing information that they have for the account--that would increase the barrier to require identity theft which is unlikely to be used just to take over steam accounts and spam).

dahfizz 3y ago

From their support page[1], > we may immediately close inactive accounts to comply with local data protection legislation I'm not sure if that's actually what their lawyers think, or if blaming GDPR is a convenient excuse. The fact that no other company seems to do this makes me think they know its BS. [1] https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-of-inactive-ubisoft-accounts/000079595 https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/account/article/closure-o...