Steam: All your games are belong to us.

If you read the ToS on any PC game you will realise you are just renting it. Seriously they all say that you don't own the rights to anything in the game you are just buying a license to use it, which the publisher retains the right to remove at any time. 

To quote from the manual of my physical copy of Max Payne 3 

"This Agreement is effective until terminated by you, by the licensor, or automatically upon your failiure to comply with its terms and conditions. Upon any termination you must destroy or return the physical copy of Software to the licensor, as well a permanently destroy all copies of the software, inluding any components installed on any client or server computer you control"

Basically the same thing is in every software ToS since the early 1990s, the only difference is that DRM gives publishers a way of enforcing it. They also keep the right to shut off any services assosiated with the game including multiplayer at any time. 

Console games are the same as well, all you own is a physical disc and a license to use the software on it, not the software it's self.

I'm not defending what Valve are doing mind, just pointing something out. 

And developers wonder why we expect these digital download titles to be $0.99-$4.99.

wtf?? i thought once you purchased a downloadable title it was yours forever, this is a FUCKING joke

i could be wrong but all of my steam games work with no internet. and many work with out steam at all. So he should be able to install the games, put a short cut in the start menu or desktop for each individual game and still play them as he pleases. He just would have to stop using the steam client to keep the games up to date or launch from. Steamworks enabled games may have issues. but even those may be ok.

that is incorrect. you can play your steam games offline with no internet. You dont need the steam client to play them (possibly for steamworks games). I have even backed up my steam games to a cd and installed them on a laptop that had no internet and it worked fine (was about a year ago). the only games i am not sure of are the steamworks games.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-agcb-2555

What is Offline Mode?

Offline Mode allows you to play games through Steam without reconnecting to the Steam Network every time you wish to play - this is particularly useful if you do not plan on playing over the internet and would prefer not to download new updates for your single-player games.

Please note that you must connect to the Steam Network and test each of the games you would like to use in Offline Mode at least once to set up your account and configure Offline Mode on your machine.

Nice try, but in the end it's all just smoke and mirrors. All EU member states have adopted consumer protection laws that protect the consumers from this kind of bullsh*tery. It's illegal for a company to hide disastrous clauses in contracts, like "we will add an extra fee of 1000€" or "we will set fire to your hedges". Since the law does not expect the average consumer to read the terms of service, any information that is not presented clearly is considered as omission of information.

Heck, you can sue Steam right now for the "btw, you're just licensing our games"-BS. At no point is the word license mentioned in the entire buying process, leading the consumer to assume, as seen in this thread, that they're buying a product. The fact that it's just a license is clearly a failure "to identify the commercial intent of the commercial practice if not already apparent from the context." So this is just a lawsuit waiting to happen, tho it won't be the consumer who looses that one ;)

Btw, I'm not a lawyer, all this information can be read in this shiny pamphlet: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_int/safe_shop/fair_bus_pract/ucp_en.pdf

Be carefull with your wording, there's probably a legal difference between a licence and a rental. My guess is that they're just licences and not rentals, since they don't have an expiration date and only expire if you violate their TOS or whether the particular Steam support staff member stepped on a Lego that day.

But please post his answer here after seeing him tomorrow. I'm curious to know what his stance on that is :)

Just tried that, it doesn't work unless I log on with the internet connected.

You certainly can't change computers without relogging into Steam. So you'd be tied to whatever install you have for the rest of your life. With transferring to laptop I think you mean the games you installed from their own disk that just happen to work with Steam's social features.