August 21, 2026
Most people making a Will know they need to think about the obvious things: their home, savings, investments, jewellery and perhaps the occasional argument over who gets the good watch.
But what about your gaming accounts? Or, more importantly, the thousands of pounds’ worth of virtual items and other digital assets that might be tied to them?
For anyone whose gaming experience begins and ends with Tetris, this may sound faintly ridiculous. But modern video games can have entire economies operating within them. Players can spend years acquiring everything from characters and virtual weapons to currencies, collectibles and other in-game items – some of which can have significant real-world value.
A recent court decision in China suggests that what happens to those assets when someone dies is a question we may increasingly need to take seriously. And, as someone whose own gaming accounts are definitely not something I would want disappearing into the digital abyss, I am entirely here for it.
In April 2026, a court in Beijing was asked to decide what should happen to 87 online gaming accounts belonging to a 36-year-old man who had died.
Over more than a decade, he had spent time and money building the accounts and accumulating valuable in-game assets. His mother wanted the accounts transferred to her so that she could sell them.
There was just one fairly significant problem: the gaming company's terms said that the company owned the account-related data and that the accounts could not simply be transferred.
The court nevertheless sided with the mother. Importantly, it did not decide that she inherited ownership of the accounts themselves. Instead, it recognised that the deceased's rights to use the accounts had an independent economic value and that those rights could therefore be inherited.
The gaming company was ordered to transfer the accounts' registration to her, which immediately raises a question much closer to home.
Potentially, quite a lot – although not all gaming accounts are created equal.
Take the game Counter-Strike, where players can acquire cosmetic designs for their virtual weapons known as “skins”. These can be traded between players, and rare examples can have substantial real-world values – sometimes running into tens of thousands of pounds.
For non-gamers, think of them as digital collectibles. They may only exist on a screen, but there is a genuine market of people willing to pay very real money for them.
Not all gaming accounts work like this, however. Household names such as Fortnite and Roblox, where players can spend real money acquiring virtual currencies, character outfits and other digital content. Those purchases are not necessarily assets which can later be sold for cash (spending £5,000 on an account does not automatically mean you own an account worth £5,000), but they illustrate just how much of our spending and personal property has moved into digital spaces.
The precise rules vary enormously between games. Some virtual items can be traded. Some have identifiable market values. Some can only be used within the game. Others may simply amount to a contractual licence granted by the company operating the platform.
And that distinction matters. Something can feel like yours, look like yours and even have cost you real money without necessarily being “yours” in the way your car, watch or bank account is.
Which leads to the more difficult question.
When you buy a Rolex, the starting point is fairly easy. You own a watch.
Digital assets are messier.
Paying real money for something in a video game does not necessarily mean you own it in the traditional sense. A platform might instead give you a licence (essentially permission to use something subject to its rules).
Fortnite is a good example. Epic Games' terms provide that its in-game content is licensed to players, rather than sold to them, and that the licence is personal and non-transferable.
Roblox takes its own approach. Its terms make clear that acquiring Robux – its virtual currency – does not mean acquiring ordinary real-world currency, while rights in virtual content remain subject to the platform's contractual rules.
Steam, meanwhile, permits certain virtual items to be traded through its own systems but restricts transferring the account itself.
So, two people could each truthfully say, “I've spent £5,000 on this account”, yet what each of them actually owns – and what, if anything, their executor could transfer after their death – could be completely different.
That is the real issue.
Potentially – but the wording of a Will cannot magically create a transferable asset where none exists.
Imagine someone dies and their Will says: “I leave my gaming accounts and any digital assets associated with them to Alex.”
Their executor says Alex gets them. The gaming company says its terms provide that the account is personal and non-transferable.
Now what?
That is essentially the conflict the Chinese court was asked to confront: what happens when traditional inheritance rights meet a contract written for a digital platform?
The Beijing court concluded that the economic rights attached to the accounts could survive the player.
The decision is not binding in Jersey, and whether a Jersey court would reach an equivalent conclusion would depend on Jersey law, the nature of the particular digital asset and the contractual terms governing it.
Jersey succession law traditionally divides property into immovable property – broadly, land and buildings – and movable property, which encompasses personal property. Subject to Jersey's succession rules, including légitime, movable property can be disposed of by Will.
Where economically valuable digital rights fit within that framework is therefore a genuinely interesting question, and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant.
Gaming is only the fun end of a much bigger issue.
Cryptocurrency is the obvious example of a digital asset, but there are also domain names, monetised social-media accounts, online businesses, digital artwork, loyalty balances and cloud-stored material which can carry financial or sentimental value. Gaming accounts increasingly sit somewhere within that conversation too.
The generations that grew up with PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC gaming are getting older. Maintaining the same account for 10, 15 or even 20 years is no longer unusual.
Twenty years ago, telling an executor that something attached to your video-game account was worth several thousand pounds might have earned you a concerned look. In 2026, it really shouldn't.
Even if your executor can legally deal with a digital asset, there is another problem: do they know it exists?
A bank account normally leaves a trail. A house is difficult to misplace. A valuable digital asset sitting behind a username, password and two-factor authentication is considerably easier to overlook.
That makes digital estate planning partly a legal exercise and partly a practical one. People with valuable digital assets should consider keeping an appropriate record of what they hold and where it is held.
That does not necessarily mean putting passwords, cryptocurrency private keys or account recovery information directly into your Will. Aside from the obvious security concerns, a Will is not an ideal place for information that changes every time you reset a password.
Instead, it means having a sensible plan for how your executors will identify your digital assets and obtain whatever information they legitimately need to deal with them.
If a digital asset has meaningful financial or sentimental value, three questions are worth asking:
The Chinese decision does not suddenly mean every gaming account can be passed down like a watch. But it is a fascinating example of courts beginning to deal with something that is only going to become more common.
Digital lives now have economic value.
The traditional estate of a house, bank account and jewellery box is increasingly accompanied by another estate made up of accounts, digital wallets, virtual items and other assets that exist entirely on a screen.
For lawyers, executors and Will-makers, that creates some genuinely interesting questions. For gamers, there is a rather simpler takeaway.
If you have spent 15 years building an account and there are digital assets associated with it worth more than your first car, perhaps it deserves slightly more estate planning than: “My mate knows my password”.
And if anyone does eventually ask me to draft a Will leaving an ‘AWP Dragon Lore’ to their best friend – a particularly rare Counter-Strike skin which, depending on its condition and version, can be worth tens of thousands of pounds – I will consider the profession to have finally caught up with the important issues.
Digital assets are becoming an increasingly important part of estate planning. From cryptocurrency and gaming accounts to online businesses and other valuable digital property, it is important to understand what you own, whether it can be transferred and how your executors can access it.
At BCR Law, our Wills and Estates team can help you consider your digital assets as part of your wider estate planning. We can advise on how different assets may be treated, identify potential issues around ownership and transferability, and help you put practical arrangements in place so your executors know what digital assets exist and how they should be dealt with. We can also ensure your Will works alongside these arrangements and reflects your wishes for both your digital and more traditional assets.
Contact our team today to discuss your estate planning and how we can help protect your assets, both online and offline.
Most people making a Will know they need to think about the obvious things: their home, savings, investments, jewellery and perhaps the occasional argument over who gets the good watch.
But what about your gaming accounts? Or, more importantly, the thousands of pounds’ worth of virtual items and other digital assets that might be tied to them?
For anyone whose gaming experience begins and ends with Tetris, this may sound faintly ridiculous. But modern video games can have entire economies operating within them. Players can spend years acquiring everything from characters and virtual weapons to currencies, collectibles and other in-game items – some of which can have significant real-world value.
A recent court decision in China suggests that what happens to those assets when someone dies is a question we may increasingly need to take seriously. And, as someone whose own gaming accounts are definitely not something I would want disappearing into the digital abyss, I am entirely here for it.
In April 2026, a court in Beijing was asked to decide what should happen to 87 online gaming accounts belonging to a 36-year-old man who had died.
Over more than a decade, he had spent time and money building the accounts and accumulating valuable in-game assets. His mother wanted the accounts transferred to her so that she could sell them.
There was just one fairly significant problem: the gaming company's terms said that the company owned the account-related data and that the accounts could not simply be transferred.
The court nevertheless sided with the mother. Importantly, it did not decide that she inherited ownership of the accounts themselves. Instead, it recognised that the deceased's rights to use the accounts had an independent economic value and that those rights could therefore be inherited.
The gaming company was ordered to transfer the accounts' registration to her, which immediately raises a question much closer to home.
Potentially, quite a lot – although not all gaming accounts are created equal.
Take the game Counter-Strike, where players can acquire cosmetic designs for their virtual weapons known as “skins”. These can be traded between players, and rare examples can have substantial real-world values – sometimes running into tens of thousands of pounds.
For non-gamers, think of them as digital collectibles. They may only exist on a screen, but there is a genuine market of people willing to pay very real money for them.
Not all gaming accounts work like this, however. Household names such as Fortnite and Roblox, where players can spend real money acquiring virtual currencies, character outfits and other digital content. Those purchases are not necessarily assets which can later be sold for cash (spending £5,000 on an account does not automatically mean you own an account worth £5,000), but they illustrate just how much of our spending and personal property has moved into digital spaces.
The precise rules vary enormously between games. Some virtual items can be traded. Some have identifiable market values. Some can only be used within the game. Others may simply amount to a contractual licence granted by the company operating the platform.
And that distinction matters. Something can feel like yours, look like yours and even have cost you real money without necessarily being “yours” in the way your car, watch or bank account is.
Which leads to the more difficult question.
When you buy a Rolex, the starting point is fairly easy. You own a watch.
Digital assets are messier.
Paying real money for something in a video game does not necessarily mean you own it in the traditional sense. A platform might instead give you a licence (essentially permission to use something subject to its rules).
Fortnite is a good example. Epic Games' terms provide that its in-game content is licensed to players, rather than sold to them, and that the licence is personal and non-transferable.
Roblox takes its own approach. Its terms make clear that acquiring Robux – its virtual currency – does not mean acquiring ordinary real-world currency, while rights in virtual content remain subject to the platform's contractual rules.
Steam, meanwhile, permits certain virtual items to be traded through its own systems but restricts transferring the account itself.
So, two people could each truthfully say, “I've spent £5,000 on this account”, yet what each of them actually owns – and what, if anything, their executor could transfer after their death – could be completely different.
That is the real issue.
Potentially – but the wording of a Will cannot magically create a transferable asset where none exists.
Imagine someone dies and their Will says: “I leave my gaming accounts and any digital assets associated with them to Alex.”
Their executor says Alex gets them. The gaming company says its terms provide that the account is personal and non-transferable.
Now what?
That is essentially the conflict the Chinese court was asked to confront: what happens when traditional inheritance rights meet a contract written for a digital platform?
The Beijing court concluded that the economic rights attached to the accounts could survive the player.
The decision is not binding in Jersey, and whether a Jersey court would reach an equivalent conclusion would depend on Jersey law, the nature of the particular digital asset and the contractual terms governing it.
Jersey succession law traditionally divides property into immovable property – broadly, land and buildings – and movable property, which encompasses personal property. Subject to Jersey's succession rules, including légitime, movable property can be disposed of by Will.
Where economically valuable digital rights fit within that framework is therefore a genuinely interesting question, and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant.
Gaming is only the fun end of a much bigger issue.
Cryptocurrency is the obvious example of a digital asset, but there are also domain names, monetised social-media accounts, online businesses, digital artwork, loyalty balances and cloud-stored material which can carry financial or sentimental value. Gaming accounts increasingly sit somewhere within that conversation too.
The generations that grew up with PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC gaming are getting older. Maintaining the same account for 10, 15 or even 20 years is no longer unusual.
Twenty years ago, telling an executor that something attached to your video-game account was worth several thousand pounds might have earned you a concerned look. In 2026, it really shouldn't.
Even if your executor can legally deal with a digital asset, there is another problem: do they know it exists?
A bank account normally leaves a trail. A house is difficult to misplace. A valuable digital asset sitting behind a username, password and two-factor authentication is considerably easier to overlook.
That makes digital estate planning partly a legal exercise and partly a practical one. People with valuable digital assets should consider keeping an appropriate record of what they hold and where it is held.
That does not necessarily mean putting passwords, cryptocurrency private keys or account recovery information directly into your Will. Aside from the obvious security concerns, a Will is not an ideal place for information that changes every time you reset a password.
Instead, it means having a sensible plan for how your executors will identify your digital assets and obtain whatever information they legitimately need to deal with them.
If a digital asset has meaningful financial or sentimental value, three questions are worth asking:
The Chinese decision does not suddenly mean every gaming account can be passed down like a watch. But it is a fascinating example of courts beginning to deal with something that is only going to become more common.
Digital lives now have economic value.
The traditional estate of a house, bank account and jewellery box is increasingly accompanied by another estate made up of accounts, digital wallets, virtual items and other assets that exist entirely on a screen.
For lawyers, executors and Will-makers, that creates some genuinely interesting questions. For gamers, there is a rather simpler takeaway.
If you have spent 15 years building an account and there are digital assets associated with it worth more than your first car, perhaps it deserves slightly more estate planning than: “My mate knows my password”.
And if anyone does eventually ask me to draft a Will leaving an ‘AWP Dragon Lore’ to their best friend – a particularly rare Counter-Strike skin which, depending on its condition and version, can be worth tens of thousands of pounds – I will consider the profession to have finally caught up with the important issues.
Digital assets are becoming an increasingly important part of estate planning. From cryptocurrency and gaming accounts to online businesses and other valuable digital property, it is important to understand what you own, whether it can be transferred and how your executors can access it.
At BCR Law, our Wills and Estates team can help you consider your digital assets as part of your wider estate planning. We can advise on how different assets may be treated, identify potential issues around ownership and transferability, and help you put practical arrangements in place so your executors know what digital assets exist and how they should be dealt with. We can also ensure your Will works alongside these arrangements and reflects your wishes for both your digital and more traditional assets.
Contact our team today to discuss your estate planning and how we can help protect your assets, both online and offline.
Most people making a Will know they need to think about the obvious things: their home, savings, investments, jewellery and perhaps the occasional argument over who gets the good watch.
But what about your gaming accounts? Or, more importantly, the thousands of pounds’ worth of virtual items and other digital assets that might be tied to them?
For anyone whose gaming experience begins and ends with Tetris, this may sound faintly ridiculous. But modern video games can have entire economies operating within them. Players can spend years acquiring everything from characters and virtual weapons to currencies, collectibles and other in-game items – some of which can have significant real-world value.
A recent court decision in China suggests that what happens to those assets when someone dies is a question we may increasingly need to take seriously. And, as someone whose own gaming accounts are definitely not something I would want disappearing into the digital abyss, I am entirely here for it.
In April 2026, a court in Beijing was asked to decide what should happen to 87 online gaming accounts belonging to a 36-year-old man who had died.
Over more than a decade, he had spent time and money building the accounts and accumulating valuable in-game assets. His mother wanted the accounts transferred to her so that she could sell them.
There was just one fairly significant problem: the gaming company's terms said that the company owned the account-related data and that the accounts could not simply be transferred.
The court nevertheless sided with the mother. Importantly, it did not decide that she inherited ownership of the accounts themselves. Instead, it recognised that the deceased's rights to use the accounts had an independent economic value and that those rights could therefore be inherited.
The gaming company was ordered to transfer the accounts' registration to her, which immediately raises a question much closer to home.
Potentially, quite a lot – although not all gaming accounts are created equal.
Take the game Counter-Strike, where players can acquire cosmetic designs for their virtual weapons known as “skins”. These can be traded between players, and rare examples can have substantial real-world values – sometimes running into tens of thousands of pounds.
For non-gamers, think of them as digital collectibles. They may only exist on a screen, but there is a genuine market of people willing to pay very real money for them.
Not all gaming accounts work like this, however. Household names such as Fortnite and Roblox, where players can spend real money acquiring virtual currencies, character outfits and other digital content. Those purchases are not necessarily assets which can later be sold for cash (spending £5,000 on an account does not automatically mean you own an account worth £5,000), but they illustrate just how much of our spending and personal property has moved into digital spaces.
The precise rules vary enormously between games. Some virtual items can be traded. Some have identifiable market values. Some can only be used within the game. Others may simply amount to a contractual licence granted by the company operating the platform.
And that distinction matters. Something can feel like yours, look like yours and even have cost you real money without necessarily being “yours” in the way your car, watch or bank account is.
Which leads to the more difficult question.
When you buy a Rolex, the starting point is fairly easy. You own a watch.
Digital assets are messier.
Paying real money for something in a video game does not necessarily mean you own it in the traditional sense. A platform might instead give you a licence (essentially permission to use something subject to its rules).
Fortnite is a good example. Epic Games' terms provide that its in-game content is licensed to players, rather than sold to them, and that the licence is personal and non-transferable.
Roblox takes its own approach. Its terms make clear that acquiring Robux – its virtual currency – does not mean acquiring ordinary real-world currency, while rights in virtual content remain subject to the platform's contractual rules.
Steam, meanwhile, permits certain virtual items to be traded through its own systems but restricts transferring the account itself.
So, two people could each truthfully say, “I've spent £5,000 on this account”, yet what each of them actually owns – and what, if anything, their executor could transfer after their death – could be completely different.
That is the real issue.
Potentially – but the wording of a Will cannot magically create a transferable asset where none exists.
Imagine someone dies and their Will says: “I leave my gaming accounts and any digital assets associated with them to Alex.”
Their executor says Alex gets them. The gaming company says its terms provide that the account is personal and non-transferable.
Now what?
That is essentially the conflict the Chinese court was asked to confront: what happens when traditional inheritance rights meet a contract written for a digital platform?
The Beijing court concluded that the economic rights attached to the accounts could survive the player.
The decision is not binding in Jersey, and whether a Jersey court would reach an equivalent conclusion would depend on Jersey law, the nature of the particular digital asset and the contractual terms governing it.
Jersey succession law traditionally divides property into immovable property – broadly, land and buildings – and movable property, which encompasses personal property. Subject to Jersey's succession rules, including légitime, movable property can be disposed of by Will.
Where economically valuable digital rights fit within that framework is therefore a genuinely interesting question, and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant.
Gaming is only the fun end of a much bigger issue.
Cryptocurrency is the obvious example of a digital asset, but there are also domain names, monetised social-media accounts, online businesses, digital artwork, loyalty balances and cloud-stored material which can carry financial or sentimental value. Gaming accounts increasingly sit somewhere within that conversation too.
The generations that grew up with PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC gaming are getting older. Maintaining the same account for 10, 15 or even 20 years is no longer unusual.
Twenty years ago, telling an executor that something attached to your video-game account was worth several thousand pounds might have earned you a concerned look. In 2026, it really shouldn't.
Even if your executor can legally deal with a digital asset, there is another problem: do they know it exists?
A bank account normally leaves a trail. A house is difficult to misplace. A valuable digital asset sitting behind a username, password and two-factor authentication is considerably easier to overlook.
That makes digital estate planning partly a legal exercise and partly a practical one. People with valuable digital assets should consider keeping an appropriate record of what they hold and where it is held.
That does not necessarily mean putting passwords, cryptocurrency private keys or account recovery information directly into your Will. Aside from the obvious security concerns, a Will is not an ideal place for information that changes every time you reset a password.
Instead, it means having a sensible plan for how your executors will identify your digital assets and obtain whatever information they legitimately need to deal with them.
If a digital asset has meaningful financial or sentimental value, three questions are worth asking:
The Chinese decision does not suddenly mean every gaming account can be passed down like a watch. But it is a fascinating example of courts beginning to deal with something that is only going to become more common.
Digital lives now have economic value.
The traditional estate of a house, bank account and jewellery box is increasingly accompanied by another estate made up of accounts, digital wallets, virtual items and other assets that exist entirely on a screen.
For lawyers, executors and Will-makers, that creates some genuinely interesting questions. For gamers, there is a rather simpler takeaway.
If you have spent 15 years building an account and there are digital assets associated with it worth more than your first car, perhaps it deserves slightly more estate planning than: “My mate knows my password”.
And if anyone does eventually ask me to draft a Will leaving an ‘AWP Dragon Lore’ to their best friend – a particularly rare Counter-Strike skin which, depending on its condition and version, can be worth tens of thousands of pounds – I will consider the profession to have finally caught up with the important issues.
Digital assets are becoming an increasingly important part of estate planning. From cryptocurrency and gaming accounts to online businesses and other valuable digital property, it is important to understand what you own, whether it can be transferred and how your executors can access it.
At BCR Law, our Wills and Estates team can help you consider your digital assets as part of your wider estate planning. We can advise on how different assets may be treated, identify potential issues around ownership and transferability, and help you put practical arrangements in place so your executors know what digital assets exist and how they should be dealt with. We can also ensure your Will works alongside these arrangements and reflects your wishes for both your digital and more traditional assets.
Contact our team today to discuss your estate planning and how we can help protect your assets, both online and offline.
Most people making a Will know they need to think about the obvious things: their home, savings, investments, jewellery and perhaps the occasional argument over who gets the good watch.
But what about your gaming accounts? Or, more importantly, the thousands of pounds’ worth of virtual items and other digital assets that might be tied to them?
For anyone whose gaming experience begins and ends with Tetris, this may sound faintly ridiculous. But modern video games can have entire economies operating within them. Players can spend years acquiring everything from characters and virtual weapons to currencies, collectibles and other in-game items – some of which can have significant real-world value.
A recent court decision in China suggests that what happens to those assets when someone dies is a question we may increasingly need to take seriously. And, as someone whose own gaming accounts are definitely not something I would want disappearing into the digital abyss, I am entirely here for it.
In April 2026, a court in Beijing was asked to decide what should happen to 87 online gaming accounts belonging to a 36-year-old man who had died.
Over more than a decade, he had spent time and money building the accounts and accumulating valuable in-game assets. His mother wanted the accounts transferred to her so that she could sell them.
There was just one fairly significant problem: the gaming company's terms said that the company owned the account-related data and that the accounts could not simply be transferred.
The court nevertheless sided with the mother. Importantly, it did not decide that she inherited ownership of the accounts themselves. Instead, it recognised that the deceased's rights to use the accounts had an independent economic value and that those rights could therefore be inherited.
The gaming company was ordered to transfer the accounts' registration to her, which immediately raises a question much closer to home.
Potentially, quite a lot – although not all gaming accounts are created equal.
Take the game Counter-Strike, where players can acquire cosmetic designs for their virtual weapons known as “skins”. These can be traded between players, and rare examples can have substantial real-world values – sometimes running into tens of thousands of pounds.
For non-gamers, think of them as digital collectibles. They may only exist on a screen, but there is a genuine market of people willing to pay very real money for them.
Not all gaming accounts work like this, however. Household names such as Fortnite and Roblox, where players can spend real money acquiring virtual currencies, character outfits and other digital content. Those purchases are not necessarily assets which can later be sold for cash (spending £5,000 on an account does not automatically mean you own an account worth £5,000), but they illustrate just how much of our spending and personal property has moved into digital spaces.
The precise rules vary enormously between games. Some virtual items can be traded. Some have identifiable market values. Some can only be used within the game. Others may simply amount to a contractual licence granted by the company operating the platform.
And that distinction matters. Something can feel like yours, look like yours and even have cost you real money without necessarily being “yours” in the way your car, watch or bank account is.
Which leads to the more difficult question.
When you buy a Rolex, the starting point is fairly easy. You own a watch.
Digital assets are messier.
Paying real money for something in a video game does not necessarily mean you own it in the traditional sense. A platform might instead give you a licence (essentially permission to use something subject to its rules).
Fortnite is a good example. Epic Games' terms provide that its in-game content is licensed to players, rather than sold to them, and that the licence is personal and non-transferable.
Roblox takes its own approach. Its terms make clear that acquiring Robux – its virtual currency – does not mean acquiring ordinary real-world currency, while rights in virtual content remain subject to the platform's contractual rules.
Steam, meanwhile, permits certain virtual items to be traded through its own systems but restricts transferring the account itself.
So, two people could each truthfully say, “I've spent £5,000 on this account”, yet what each of them actually owns – and what, if anything, their executor could transfer after their death – could be completely different.
That is the real issue.
Potentially – but the wording of a Will cannot magically create a transferable asset where none exists.
Imagine someone dies and their Will says: “I leave my gaming accounts and any digital assets associated with them to Alex.”
Their executor says Alex gets them. The gaming company says its terms provide that the account is personal and non-transferable.
Now what?
That is essentially the conflict the Chinese court was asked to confront: what happens when traditional inheritance rights meet a contract written for a digital platform?
The Beijing court concluded that the economic rights attached to the accounts could survive the player.
The decision is not binding in Jersey, and whether a Jersey court would reach an equivalent conclusion would depend on Jersey law, the nature of the particular digital asset and the contractual terms governing it.
Jersey succession law traditionally divides property into immovable property – broadly, land and buildings – and movable property, which encompasses personal property. Subject to Jersey's succession rules, including légitime, movable property can be disposed of by Will.
Where economically valuable digital rights fit within that framework is therefore a genuinely interesting question, and one that is likely to become increasingly relevant.
Gaming is only the fun end of a much bigger issue.
Cryptocurrency is the obvious example of a digital asset, but there are also domain names, monetised social-media accounts, online businesses, digital artwork, loyalty balances and cloud-stored material which can carry financial or sentimental value. Gaming accounts increasingly sit somewhere within that conversation too.
The generations that grew up with PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and PC gaming are getting older. Maintaining the same account for 10, 15 or even 20 years is no longer unusual.
Twenty years ago, telling an executor that something attached to your video-game account was worth several thousand pounds might have earned you a concerned look. In 2026, it really shouldn't.
Even if your executor can legally deal with a digital asset, there is another problem: do they know it exists?
A bank account normally leaves a trail. A house is difficult to misplace. A valuable digital asset sitting behind a username, password and two-factor authentication is considerably easier to overlook.
That makes digital estate planning partly a legal exercise and partly a practical one. People with valuable digital assets should consider keeping an appropriate record of what they hold and where it is held.
That does not necessarily mean putting passwords, cryptocurrency private keys or account recovery information directly into your Will. Aside from the obvious security concerns, a Will is not an ideal place for information that changes every time you reset a password.
Instead, it means having a sensible plan for how your executors will identify your digital assets and obtain whatever information they legitimately need to deal with them.
If a digital asset has meaningful financial or sentimental value, three questions are worth asking:
The Chinese decision does not suddenly mean every gaming account can be passed down like a watch. But it is a fascinating example of courts beginning to deal with something that is only going to become more common.
Digital lives now have economic value.
The traditional estate of a house, bank account and jewellery box is increasingly accompanied by another estate made up of accounts, digital wallets, virtual items and other assets that exist entirely on a screen.
For lawyers, executors and Will-makers, that creates some genuinely interesting questions. For gamers, there is a rather simpler takeaway.
If you have spent 15 years building an account and there are digital assets associated with it worth more than your first car, perhaps it deserves slightly more estate planning than: “My mate knows my password”.
And if anyone does eventually ask me to draft a Will leaving an ‘AWP Dragon Lore’ to their best friend – a particularly rare Counter-Strike skin which, depending on its condition and version, can be worth tens of thousands of pounds – I will consider the profession to have finally caught up with the important issues.
Digital assets are becoming an increasingly important part of estate planning. From cryptocurrency and gaming accounts to online businesses and other valuable digital property, it is important to understand what you own, whether it can be transferred and how your executors can access it.
At BCR Law, our Wills and Estates team can help you consider your digital assets as part of your wider estate planning. We can advise on how different assets may be treated, identify potential issues around ownership and transferability, and help you put practical arrangements in place so your executors know what digital assets exist and how they should be dealt with. We can also ensure your Will works alongside these arrangements and reflects your wishes for both your digital and more traditional assets.
Contact our team today to discuss your estate planning and how we can help protect your assets, both online and offline.