The Digital Afterlife: Preserving Your Online Gaming Legacy
As online and mobile gaming continues to grow in popularity across age groups, more and more people are investing significant time and in some cases money into building up profiles, assets, and communities within their favorite games. From massive multiplayer worlds to competitive shooters to mobile match puzzlers, games provide enjoyment, challenge, stress relief and social connection.
For many dedicated gamers at RocketPlay Casino, these virtual personas, items and networks constitute meaningful digital possessions and relationships they’ve built over years. However, there’s often little clarity around what happens to these gaming profiles and assets after a player passes away. Without specific arrangements, accounts may remain inactive, in-game property may sit unused, and tight-knit communities may dissolve.
Proactively considering your online gaming legacy allows you to dictate what aspects of your gaming life carry on in your absence. This article covers key steps around preserving and bequeathing your gaming profiles, assets and communities.
Take Inventory of Your Gaming Assets
The first step is cataloging your gaming presence across platforms and titles. For each game you actively play, document:
- Login/profile information – Usernames, emails/accounts used to register, passwords
- In-game assets – Characters, items, currency, property, builds, etc. accrued
- In-game communities – Guilds, clans, friend networks, groups participated in
Recording this information in a secure document ensures those handling your estate can access and deal with your gaming profiles appropriately.
Name Account Beneficiaries
Most gaming platforms allow you to name specific account beneficiaries – individuals you designate to take over an account in case of your death or disability.
Platforms like Steam provide built-in Steam Community settings to assign account successors and inheritance authorizations. Similarly, Blizzard’s Battle.net naming tools enable inheriting access to World of Warcraft and other Blizzard titles.
Console platforms also incorporate legacy options – for PlayStation, you can set family members as account inheritors, while Xbox lets you record a specific beneficiary.
Naming beneficiaries streamlines account transfer and allows your nominated friends or family to potentially continue playing with your profiles and assets.
Formalize Specific Asset/Currency Bequests
While beneficiary naming grants account access, you can also formally bequeath certain gaming assets and currency by detailing instructions in your will.
For significant in-game possessions you want directed to particular individuals – such as long-built characters, high-level gear, costly skins, premium currency balances – specifically outline these along with designated recipients within your will provisions.
Get legal advice drawing up gaming asset sections in your will to ensure they are sound and enforceable. You may also consider setting up a trust structure to formally hold certain gaming assets before transferring ownership.
Preserve Communities through Succession Planning
Integral game communities like guilds and clans can quickly dissolve if key admin members depart without succession plans.
If you lead or administrate gaming groups within titles like World of Warcraft, Eve Online, Final Fantasy XIV or shooter clans, put together community succession documentation. This should cover:
- Hierarchy/roles and responsibilities
- Key external contacts e.g. forum admins
- Login credentials for community platforms/accounts
- Direction for leadership replacement process
Brief deputy leaders or promising members earmarked as your potential successor over time. This gives your community the best chance of preserving its cohesion and culture after you’re gone.
Memorialization in Virtual Spaces
Within certain new slots online games, you may wish to plan small memorial spaces to commemorate deceased players. These serve as semi-permanent tributes viewable by the player’s friends and community.
In games like World of Warcraft and Runescape, players have arranged in-game gatherings and built virtual shrines, statues or spaces to memorialize well-known group members or guild leaders after their death.
If applicable, think about locations, items, or customs that would make for an appropriate permanent memorial within your main games. Share these ideas with beneficiary members who can enact your virtual memorial plans.
While confronting gaming mortality may seem overly morbid, documenting and delegating your online gaming legacy empowers you to perpetuate the profiles, possessions and communities you cherish beyond your lifetime. With player numbers continuously rising across ages, adequately safeguarding gaming assets is an increasingly prudent estate planning consideration.