You know that user agreement you greed to when you made your account? It explicitly sates that they can revoke your access to any license. Period. You agreed to that.

The customer support exists precisely to communicate with customers, ordering not to contact them anymore, as far as I am concerned, is an abuse. This is further proof of how much Steam sucks.

They did... eventually. Because of their refusal to shut up, eventually Steam issued an ultimatum: stop contacting us about this, or permanently lose your account.

OP made their choice.

13.5 hours later I mean you were warned and warned and warned.

Except they already had an answer, and just because they didn't like it, they kept harassing VALVe employees. If you get told no and that it won't change, inundating them with further messages (to the count of hundreds according to Mara) is grounds to "Stop calling us!"

The difference is that you own your car.

You don;t even have to hire a lawyer:

https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/#11

This reminds me of the time I got banned from flying Delta because I slept during a flight.

Now mind you, I sleep in the nude, but I still think it was a bit harsh.

Have you seen yourself nude? Lifetime ban may have been getting off easy.

Off-topic:
I am curious: what is the difference between "Defaming, verbally abusing, or stalking" and "Flaming or insulting other members"? The latter seems a subset of the former to me. Also, why would it be against the rules to discuss console emulators on a Windows gaming site?

I wouldn't be so sure anymore if you own or you're owned in nowadays.

Touché.

But my point is that Steam games are a subscription to a service. Access to the games is an ongoing service that they can choose to terminate. GOG can close your account just as easily, but it has a much lower impact on anyone who actually keeps their games locally.

This seems to be up for debate, Some consider emulators piracy, and I would imagine Steam is VERY strict about people discussing piracy.

True, though you don't own your car on GOG any more than you do on Steam. It's more akin to having your car stashed in a foreign country where the authorities can't touch it if you break any of the terms you bought it for.

And my point is, is really complaining (or even being annoying as hell) enough to take away any goods you've already paid for?
Yes, I did read the whole story and I am not so sure who's abusing the system more..

Mike_cesara was the one making comparisons to cars. I wasn't saying that having a game on GOG is like owning a car at all and your analogy still doesn't work as it implies that keeping backups of GOG games downloaded from a terminated account is somehow exploiting a loophole by stashing the games where GOG can't reach them. It's not that GOG can't get to your backups, it's that they're nothing to do with GOG and they would have no interest in getting to them.

I was saying that on Steam you buy a licence and a subscription to the service that allows you to download and run the game.

On GOG, you buy a licence and a subscription to a service that allows you to download the game.

In the case of Steam account termination you don't lose your licence to the software, just your only means of access (of course there are some DRM-free games on Steam). You still own your licence but your ability to run a lot of the software is compromised.

In the case of GOG account termination you don't lose your licence to the software either, just your means of downloading. If you have the files then you're fine to keep using them as you still own your invisible licence to use the software.


See above. The goods (licences) are still yours, it's use of the service that's suspended. Of course, the service is mostly required for the games to function, but that's something every Steam user accepted when they signed up.