Yes, but I'm not a drummer so the odds of me just blowing up ar

Or, perhaps, the license could be transferable for a small fee paid to the company providing the license. I know that Blizzard actually allows you to transfer your StarCraft 2 license to another person if you go through their specific process to do so, however, there is unfortunately no reason to do so, since the person acquiring the license must pay the equivalent of a new purchase to do so.

And let us not even talk about the aneurysms.
Oops, my bad...

That's not funny, actually. A good friend of mine just died a couple years ago from an aneurysm at 27.
That, along with being recently diagnosed with cancer, has shocked me out of my "I'm immortal! Wheeee!" mentality that every male seems to develop upon entering puberty.

Reminds me of that very strong scene in one Continuum episode, ons of those playing in the future; they are cleaning up grandmas stuff, a box falls down with books & CDs falling out, all eyes wide open shocked and a dude gasping "illegal media!"

There have been problems in cases where a person has died leaving a large account of digital media such as iTunes. Accounts like that are nontransferable, and account servicers will not transfer them to beneficiaries or heirs. When an online bank account is involved, it gets even uglier; online banks have hidden behind the nontransferability of the online account and refused to honor even traditional documents like letters testamentary.

I do not think any of these problems would arise with respect to GOG accounts. The language they use is that the games are licensed to anyone and any computer in your household, and there are not restrictions on who you may authorize to use your account (only that you are responsible if they use it to abuse the service).

There is much that has not been done in dragging the world of online accounts into the world where the orderly transfer of property is normal and expected.

True, but thank god GOG games are DRM-free, ie. they don't require the service (that possibly can't be be transferred to other people) in order to install and play them. So the game licenses could still be practically transferred to e.g. your children, even if you couldn't transfer the GOG service (account) and support at the same time.

Just make sure you download all your GOG games to your local repository before you die. :)

The problem you mention is much more relevant to e.g. most Steam games, those which don't run without the Steam service/client.

How is the ownership of an account determined?

The problem arises that GOG does not really have the resources to verify documentation coming in from any country they sell games in that the person is dead. And, I'd wager that most of the people here have fewer than a dozen games making the process of transferring the games to be more expensive than just buying them a second time.

I know there's a few folks that have over a hundred games, but I suspect that we're very much in the minority.

Heh. But seriously, how would a company prove in a court of law who the account belongs to? On GOG there's a birth date field as part of registration, so I suppose that could be used, but say I have a Steam account, what would identify me as the account owner?

Maybe by the credit card used with that account (if I recall right, Steam saves cc information, even if encrypted), or if the case is already in the court as you suggested, that the original owner of the account is dead, which is the reason he/she wanted to transfer the account in the first place. Pretty hard to use an account from afterlife, hence the account could be suspended.

I don't think Valve would necessarily sue anyone from using someone else's account, they would just suspend that account if they somehow found out, or strongly suspected such misuse (if someone complains about the suspension, they can re-check his/her identity then). If there are any cases where a Steam account was suspended as it was thought it has changed ownership, it would be certainly interesting to find out how Valve made that conclusion.

Anyway, I guess that is all irrelevant, as I understood the original question was what is legal, not "what can I do without getting caught?". Similar if he asked whether he can legally share GOG games to all his friends, I don't think the proper answer is "Who can stop you?".

still, when it comes to patches or updates - gOg is in the same boat as everyone else. shrug.

So if I create an account for my daughter and buy games for her using my credit card then the account is considered mine and she can't legally use it?

Also, what happens if all the games in the account come from keys bought on other stores?

I didn't mean to imply that the case is already in court, rather that it's pointless, but since companies also take "pirates" to court on the basis of an IP address, I guess that's not out of the question. However, the point is that they'd have to prove that the dead person is the owner of the account in the first place, otherwise the accusation of transferring the account would be meaningless.

That said, I can see now how they might do it. For example the Steam security measure has you naming a computer, and that could indicate who uses the account.