between BFG and Meat, i think you are *both* right. I can see the good in the argument of someone who wants to keep and item, but also in the argument of someone who says that particular item is something they enjoy consuming without the necessity to keep it forever. Again, BFG's argument of "i WANT to keep it forever" is just as valid.
The point here is "what if some third party takes away your implied right of ownership?"
Becauser Steam never really stated categorically if they take responsibility for your ownership. They never said "your games will be available forever and if they are not, then Steam takes liability".
Correct me if i am wrong here. But also i would preentively state that, if they have, that could well have been marketing fluff; unless they said "HERE is how we insure that your games will always be available" then i wouldn't believe them.
Now that we have out of the way the silly question "but what if Steam magically ceases to exist", then we have the more reasonable "what if Steam locks you out of your games in another way" and please note that any solution here must NOT include piracy. If you chose to include piracy then there is no need to legitimately purchase the games in the first place, right?
Now, i would think that Steam will walk the line with dropping support for a very think chunk of their games, so few that the amount of complaints will be minimal. Yeah eventually some weird-ass ol DOS games will stop working, and maybe 5 people will complain, but as a business they won't be affected.
What is more realistic is that Steam offsets the responsibilty to YOU, for example, they say "Steam no longer supports XP", but set up the platform in a way that they KNOW the community can write a 5min hack that allows XP to continue working, so they get the XP users to STILL continue supporting steam, while having none of the responsibility of supporting them back.
That is going to be a concern for fringe users and none fo median users. People like BFG are gonna get shafted, and consumers like Meat are gonna be happy. Your God Of War and FIFA will continue working, but your C64 games will not. ... i mean, rather than a possibilty, i see that as an almost certain fact. And once you do get shafted, you are gonna have to find a non-Steam way to help yourself.