OK, the wait is over. We can close off the the worry about what will happen if Steam goes under. Will we be able to still play our games?

The answer is yes! I emailed customer support with the following:

"I am concerned with further purchases from your company. What happens if your company goes out of business? Your competitors have already addressed this issue by providing an explanation, yet you continue to avoid a clear answer."

Customer support replied with the following:

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

"In the unlikely event of the discontinuation of the Steam network, measures are in place to ensure that all users continue to have have access to their Steam games.

If you have any further questions, please let us know - we will be happy to assist you."

daviangel

This is old news.
They've been saying that for years now.
What they haven't said is exactly what measures they are going to take?
Are they going to provide a DRM removal tool like EA for all your games or what?

I was gonna say the same thing, what measures are those. The OP should reply back and ask.

they probaly just turn off updateing and now steam dosnt care if its on a network or if the games are updated.
just hope you have all your games installed when they go under. :P
thats just my thoughts on it,

If/when steam goes under PC gameing will be done anyway.  Steam is the lynchpin of the entire market sans MMORPGs.

I'll just dust off my 8-bit nintento.

Even if Valve went under, there is a 99% chance some other company would buy them out and take over steam anyway.

Plus if the main steam servers went down, there are still local content servers all around the world that you could connect to, which are hosted by companies other than valve.

they said you could play your games but didnt mention online gaming

I'm not so worried about authentication, my main concern would be how you'd get your digital copies if you needed to without any physical media.  Is Steam going to keep download servers up or are they going to rely on torrents lol?  Going to be a scary day when people need to backup 1TB of Steam games for perpetuity knowing its going to be a not-so-fun experience trying to download them later if they have to.  /hugs my physical copies of all non-Steam games.

As for multiplayer, I'd say any game that relies on Steam's servers for authentication will cease to work in multiplayer.

rblaes_99

it is like saying what will happen to my corvette when earth runs out of oil? 

when steam dies it is because PC gaming is over.  you won't be playing/authenticating/downloading/updating anything.

steam has become the foundation for the whole dang thing like it or not.
(I love steam personally)

Idk, I could see a scenario where Steam diminishes greatly, it would just take 3-4 of the major publishers partnering up and creating their own online subscription-based service and keeping their game catalogs exclusive.  You may think there's no way that would ever happen, but if you read recent comments from Activision's Bobby Kotick you'll see there's already those kind of plans in the works.
 
Imagine say....EA, Activision, THQ, Ubisoft and Rockstar partnering up to create their own online gaming service, similar to Steam and keeping their titles exclusive, similar to Valve with their own titles.  If push came to shove what are you going to choose?  EA and Ubisoft already have the beginnings of these web portals and overall more and more publishers are making inroads here.  Activision and Blizzard already have B.net and all indications are B.net 2.0 is moving in this direction as well.  Steam certainly has a huge lead in this regard but to say they're invulnerable or immune to market changes barring a catastrophic collapse of the PC Gaming market would be a bit premature imo.

Ya there's no doubt Steam is the most widespread and adopted service by far but if we go back in time to ~2003 people HATED Steam and the fact Valve required you to jump through hoops and register/validate your game.  Also, for the most part, if you didn't play any Valve games, you didn't need Steam.

The situation changed drastically however when other publishers started offering their games and catalogs on Steam.  Some of the bigger names only recently embraced Steam (for numerous financial reasons I'm sure), like EA and Rockstar for example only made the shift as recently as 2008 I believe.  In all cases its been kind of a big deal when one of them made the move and has contributed greatly to Steam's explosive growth over the last few years.

So now really Steam's greatest asset is its installed user-base, approximately 25 million, but that user-base still relies on content, the majority of which still comes from other publishers.  If those publishers walked with their catalogs I don't think Steam would keep its position of market dominance on the strength of Valve's titles alone. 

As you hinted at, it would certainly be a greater inconvenience for the end-user having to set-up multiple accounts for multiple services all over the place, but I think this is the reality we're moving towards as more and more of these publishers/developers want a piece of this lucrative digital distribution and subscription-based pie.

agreed. 

I vividly recall a good friend taking his preordered copy of HL2 back to microcenter and demanding (with a red face) a full refund when he learned he could not install the game without first installing steam (which he insisted was akin to a virus).... 

it is interesting to see how the entire industry has developed in the last 5-7 years.

Additionally, It is also troubling to see the majority of games moving to the micro-transaction / paid DLC models as well for every stupid little thing.  The industry greed will be what kills it ultimately. 

I recently read an article from a developer that basicly said (not verbatim)  "we don't want to sell you a game for $50 and be done, we want to sell you a game for $50, and then sell you content to add to it making it a $200 game".   I find this trend most troubling.

S.Homen

I'm not worried about Valve going under... but they've been telling us this for like... ever. :P

if they keep having these summer and christmas sales with prices slashed like crazy, I don't see how they can go under anyway LOL

I am not to worried. I mean after-all.... How many of the games that we have purchased in the past five years do we routinely still play? Not to mention the advancement of the video and resolutions. I no longer play any of my games that cannot go to 5760x1200 res...

In the end change will come, and we will be on to better and bigger things by then

Neggers
Even if Valve went under, there is a 99% chance some other company would buy them out and take over steam anyway.

Actually, no. Gabe Newell said that he'd rather watch Valve slowly crumble down than to sell out to another company.

The new xbox coming out this year should team up with Steam, its already a Windows10 sustem.

I know it's not going to happen, but it would be awesome to play AgeOfEmpires, Starcraft, and every game you have ever purchased on Xbox.