«How do I transfer my Steam account» hides three different questions: moving
games to another account, moving an account to a new email or phone, and
undoing a link to some other platform. Valve answers all three in its own help
pages, and the answers are short — one no and two yes, with a waiting
period. This page keeps to those pages, and ends with what they mean for an
account that changes hands.
Valve's help centre says it in one sentence: «Steam accounts can not be merged
together. Per the Steam Subscriber Agreement, Steam game subscriptions / CD
keys are nontransferable and cannot be reset / moved between Steam accounts.»
A library belongs to the account it was bought on, for the life of the
account. The account name and the SteamID cannot be changed either — «even by
Steam Support staff members»; only the profile name can.
So «transferring a Steam account» never means the games. It means the
account itself: whoever holds its keys holds the library.
Email. Account settings → Change contact email: the account password
plus the new address, then a verification link sent to the new mailbox. If you
cannot receive Steam Guard emails and a phone is on the account, the email can
also be reset from a browser, confirmed by SMS.
Phone. Contact info → Manage your phone number → remove or replace,
confirmed by text. An out-of-date number you no longer control is removed by
Steam Support, which «needs to re-verify your account ownership» first. One
game adds its own rule: a phone number can be associated with only one Dota 2
account at a time, and a number removed from one cannot be used again for
three months.
Steam Guard mobile authenticator. Removed from the app (Steam Guard →
Remove Authenticator) or from Account Details → Security & Devices without
the phone. Removing it costs the account 15 days without trading or the
Community Market; adding a new one keeps a 15-day hold on trades made in
the first 7 days. Moving it to a new phone needs both devices, an SMS
code, and produces a recovery code Valve tells you not to skip.
Authorized devices. Account Details → Manage Steam Guard deauthorizes
every computer and device that has ever been remembered on the account, in
one click.
Steam Family. Up to six members share libraries. An adult can leave at
any time, «however, they will need to wait 1 year from when they joined the
previous family to create or join a new family», and the slot they leave is
locked for a year too. And an adult in a family can recover a child
account's credentials once the child has been a member for 30 days — a
family is a recovery route, which matters below.
Steam does not keep a page of everything an account is linked to; each link
lives on the other side and follows that platform's rule. The one we have
checked against the publisher's page: unlinking a Steam account from an
Epic account puts a restriction on it, and that restriction can be lifted
once every 365 days — see
Epic Games account: can't log in, recover, unlink.
The rest — EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, PlayStation Network — are governed by
their own help centres, and «unlink» there ranges from a button to a support
ticket. Read the other platform before assuming.
A VAC ban is «permanent, non-negotiable, and cannot be removed by Steam
Support», and the line that matters to a buyer: «Any bans added to an account
will remain regardless of who was using the account at the time». A game ban
is issued by the developer under the same principle. A ban is the one thing
on a Steam account that no key changes.
An account changes hands as its keys, and every key above can be made yours —
in this order, because each step closes a door the previous owner could still
use: password, email, phone, authenticator, devices, family. Three things to
know before you start:
- The trade hold is the price of ownership. Adding your authenticator is
what makes the account yours, and it costs 15 days of held trades — a
Valve rule, not a defect, explained in
Steam trade hold and limited accounts after you buy.
- A family is a way back in. If the account sits in a Steam Family with
the previous owner as an adult, that adult can recover its credentials —
leave the family first, and know that you then cannot join another for a
year.
- Keys are not proof. Steam Support returns an account to whoever proves
they created it — original email, first receipt, the CD key — after every
key has changed. What that means, and why the first month matters, is in
Steam account recovery and proof of ownership.
What our shelf states about bans, live:
The «not stated» row is the part of the shelf described by sellers in prose
rather than read from the profile; open the profile before paying — a ban is
public, and it stays.
- Change the password, then the email to a mailbox that is yours
(confirm from the new inbox), then the phone.
- Remove the previous owner's authenticator if it is still on, add
yours, write down the recovery code — and accept the 15-day hold.
- Manage Steam Guard → deauthorize all devices; sign in again only from
your own.
- Leave any Steam Family the account is in; remove saved payment methods
that are not yours.
- Do not touch the store country until you have a local payment method —
the region rules are in
Steam account region: what the store country changes.
Buying: Steam accounts · Rust accounts
· old accounts. Selling:
list a Steam account — the seller's side of every rule above is
in how to sell a Steam account.
Every rule above is Valve's own — «SteamID, Steam Account Names, Merging
Accounts and Deleting Accounts», «Changing the Contact E-mail for a Steam
Account», «Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator», «Trading and Market
Restrictions», «Steam Guard», «Steam Families», «Adding a Phone Number to a
Dota Account», «I've been VAC banned» — as of September 2026, at the time of
writing. The table is read from our live catalogue when the page loads.
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