What happens to an online gaming account or NFT collection when the owner dies without leaving login details?

An online gaming account or an NFT collection is generally treated as property of the deceased and, in principle, forms part of the estate the same as any other asset, though there is no dedicated Ontario law covering either one. In practice, without login details or recovery information, an executor faces two separate obstacles: the platform's own terms of service (which may restrict or prohibit account transfer at all, regardless of who inherits) and the technical problem of simply getting in.

For NFTs held in a self-custodied crypto wallet, access depends entirely on recovering the wallet's private key or seed phrase; if that information dies with the owner and was never recorded, the NFTs can become permanently inaccessible. For a gaming account tied to a publisher's servers, the executor generally has to contact the platform directly, provide a death certificate and proof of estate trustee authority, and work within whatever recovery or account-closure process that company offers — outcomes vary widely and are not guaranteed. Because this area is unsettled, the most useful step a person can take before death is leaving a secure, updated inventory of accounts and access information for their executor, rather than relying on any legal mechanism to fill the gap afterward.