Saw this on another forum and thought I'd share it with you:

Just a friendly reminder that you don't actually own anything tied to distribution services such as Steam, PSN, XBLA, and that they can change the rules at any time, giving you no real option but to accept their terms, because they hold your game library hostage and you are completely at their mercy.



A correct point of view would be to treat anything obtained digitally as rented.

Ehhhhhh, that is pretty bad

I primarily buy from GOG where possible, and keep several backups of my installation files. At least I can feel like I really own those.

but, the tech support person didn't even answer the guy's question

Pretty clear the answer is "no".

So wait...can you not play the games you bought on Steam without Steam? They aren't just downloaded onto your harddrive? PSN could decide to not let anyone play their games tomorrow through a user agreement but that wouldn't stop me from going offline and keep playing them...unless my automatic update does it while I sleep!!!!

No. But really that's not how steam rolls right? You can be offline and still play the games you bought and downloaded. Removing your account wouldn't delete them off your PC.

I wonder why the guy is disagreeing with the T&C anyways?

It's the change where you're not allowed to take part in a class action against them.

What's the class action about?

Any possible future class action. The big hypothetical one being, what if Steam shut down and deprived everyone of their bought games.

Sorry, Steam does require you to check in with the server when you start playing a game. All the game files are on your hard drive but the DRM stops you playing them if your account is banned/deactivated. Steam is a form of DRM.