Recently passed U.S. law has finally forced Valve's hand on its approach to digital ownership rights on Steam.

Valve is now explicitly disclosing that you don’t own the games you buy from its Steam online store. The company has added a note on the payment checkout screen stating that “a purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam,” as reported earlier by Engadget.

There comes a point in most experienced Steam shoppers' lives where they wonder what would happen if their account was canceled or stolen, or perhaps they just stopped breathing. It's scary to think about how many games in your backlog will never get played;

Steam appears to have started posting a notice in its shopping cart that purchases on its storefront are only for a license and not a game, according to a notice spotted by Engadget. It looks like an attempt by the company to get ahead of a new California law coming next year that forces companies to admit that buyers don't actually own digital content.

California has introduced a law that forces digital stores to tell customers that they're just licensing content—not buying it—and with that comes the news that Steam is now complying with the legislation,

Steam is informing users that they don’t fully own the games they purchase, as a new California law on digital content ownership looms.