That's true, but in general it's easy to archive games from Steam and (as long as the publisher doesn't use any 3rd-party DRM) they're trivial to crack.
I buy my games from Steam because of the convenience and to support the developers, but if, say, Gaben kicks the bucket and Steam suddenly closes/turns evil I can just as easily pirate all of my games back. So from a game preservation standpoint Steam isn't that bad compared to the locked down consoles and their walled gardens.
> I buy my games from Steam because of the convenience and to support the developers, but if, say, Gaben kicks the bucket and Steam suddenly closes/turns evil I can just as easily pirate all of my games back.
I'd recommend pirating copies now to keep as backups while it's still easy. You can't be sure you'll be able to find copies of less popular games in the future, having the control over our own computers to do things like run unauthorized software is being threatened all the time, the ever expanding surveillance over our lives makes it increasingly risky to do anything legally questionable, and the copyright regime is only getting more powerful. I don't think piracy is going to die out any time soon, but I do suspect it's only going to get more difficult as we're increasingly controlled and spied on.
I buy my games from Steam because of the convenience and to support the developers, but if, say, Gaben kicks the bucket and Steam suddenly closes/turns evil I can just as easily pirate all of my games back. So from a game preservation standpoint Steam isn't that bad compared to the locked down consoles and their walled gardens.