But those customers would lose their Steam games too, that's the whole point of Steam criticism.

SimonG uses this argument too, but, isn't that license subject to Steam SA? Licenses don't just give you the right to use a piece of software, they give you that right under the conditions you accept when you start using it, and the conditions for Steam games are pretty draconian.
In fact, those repositories already exist, ;)

I'm amazed at how many people think their Steam games would be uncoupled from the Steam client should Valve go under. If the company's in that dire a financial situation, you can bet none of their limited resources will be put towards unlocking all the games tied to Steam.

I have a couple dozen games on Steam, but if Valve goes under, I'm quite prepared to hoist the Jolly Roger and make sure my games are still accessible and playable. Because I'm pretty sure Valve won't.

...

It was meant as an example of a straw man argument - e.g. not to be taken as an argument at all... ;-)

As for games on Steam becoming unavailable if Steam goes under, I think I'm more optimistic than most "Steam skeptics". As you say, you do own the license to the games, so if Steam is no more then any (forced) agreement with the Steam service is void. Hence you'd probably be left with some DRM free games, some requiring activation against a server the (new) publisher is hosting, some utilizing other forms of DRM - and maybe a few that won't work at all (only MP, too much relying Steam infrastructure etc)
I'd expect the developers/publishers selling their games on Steam to deliever patches that'd uncouple Steam related stuff from their games if Steam goes under.

You may be right, but I still have serious doubts. Either way, all I'm saying is I'd find a way to make the games I paid for work.

I don't know if I'm right, which is why I only buy games that need online activation etc if I'm also fine with only having them for a limited time. Not that I'd feel particularily bad about pirating a game I owned if the distributor decided to f**k me over.. =P

I've been moving between Germany and Poland a lot and I haven't ever had any trouble of this kind, no matter whether I used a German bank account in Poland, a Polish one in Germany etc.. Only thing I had to make sure was that the billing address is in the country where I'm currently located but it's hardly a problem to enter an address, is it. And my brother hasn't even had any trouble buying games in Russia with a German credit card. Really weird that others are experiencing such problems. I think it's rather about how you set up your credit cards then what Steam wants (for example before using my Polish credit card for Steam I had to configure a few things concerning online payments - I didn't have to do this with my German credit card for some reason).

Sooner or later, there will be streaming-only games, the perfect DRM.
Fair enough, but they are still not legally bound to do so.

Perfect DRM means that you won't even get to see or hear the game. Else there's always the risk of reverse engineering. :D

Quote of the year!

I boycott steam because every Steam sale is one more statistic saying that PC gamers don't want actual PC releases ...

So every Steamworks game is automatically "any old piece of rubbish that gets shat onto the market"? What a great baseline...


Do you know the Pirate Party?

He didn't say that you know. It was actually You that implied he wasn't playing "the best games available" (or "was playing any old piece..." being the other extreme) due to avoiding Steam.
Pow, conversational English!

I guess the anti-piracy effect of Steams DRM is probably only good in the first hours after release when a torrent might not yet be available and with Steam afaik there weren't torrents before release. After a day or two they could as well turn it off if it was only for the effect.

And then there are the technically not so educated people who even don't know how to torrent. They know nothing about computers except that if there is a button showing up you should always click on agree/yes/...

From the point of publishers DRM might not be totally pointless. If it would work better against pirates and would mean less hassles for the customers it would protect your investments and could result in even lowered prices per sold unit.

Anyway, if I would be a publisher I would go putting all non-time-critical game content on servers and making all my games even SP always on with some flexibility but without offline mode. Forget the users who don't have Internet, just produce for those who have (which are a majority anyway) and you can be relatively sure that pirates will bite the dust without any additional DRM because DRM is naturally built-in. Then this whole discussion here will probably prove useless.

Errors happen with every service. E.g. recently my Sophos antivirus programm detected its own update as a virus and blocked it.

It would depend how quickly Steam reacted and repaired the damage...

Huh? I said: "Some of the best games released are Steamworks games". And I'm not only implying, I'm stating that if you boycott Steam, you are missing some of the best games currently available (legally that is. As Steam games are extremely easy to pirate).

He says, "I don't play "any old piece of rubbish that gets shat onto the market". Only brilliant games.

Therefore I would say he says that any steamworks game is automatically any not brilliant. Which I consider childish at best.