vulchor: Very convincing argument. I'd even go a little further with the Games for Windows Live reference. When it was originally being pitched to publishers, mobile was small potatoes, Apple really didn't matter much for gaming, neither did Linux, and Microsoft was very much on top and looked like nothing could ever happen to MS. It seemed like a real real safe bet. If anyone could afford to keep these servers running, surely the richest software corporation in the world could.

However, I really doubt publishers really care about the longevity of their products. History shows that they have always been more concerned with rushing out new products, regardless of quality, for the quickest, easiest buck. That's why so many old games, before GOG came around, remained very difficult to get working on modern operating systems, many times even if the version difference was only one step, like Me to XP, or XP to Vista. There are more examples too to illustrate that short-sighted thinking, which also is evidenced in the incredibly tumultuous nature of the industry itself. It fails to look back, and it fails to look forward, so focused on the immediate profit. EPIC is probably the ONLY independent large publisher/developer that has consistently bucked that trend.

To further argue against the inane idea that Steam has the customer's best interest at heart, and is worth placing blind trust in, I present the fact that you do NOT own your games, you license them from Steam and Steam retains the right to deny you access to them FOR ANY REASON. If you don't like them changing their terms of service, you can't just take the games you "bought" prior and leave the service. No, your account is terminated and you lose access to everything permanently. If your conduct is something they don't like, you lose again. If you even begin to start the process to attempt to sue them for some reason (I know it's hard to imagine that a corporation may eventually mishandle the 'rights' of a customer') you lose all your games.

They are like the Walmart of gaming. Try to unionize, you're fired. Speak to the media about deplorable working conditions, you're fired. Try to get OSHA involved, you're fired.

What if Steam believes that taking a different approach, say leaving PC in the dust to support only the ARM architecture (not terribly far-fetched of an idea a few years from now, although I'd still be shocked) because supporting both architectures increases costs. You think they'll just give you all the games you bought, DRM-free? No. In fact, they don't even have the power to do that. Every publisher of every game that has Steamworks would have to sign off on that, and be forced with paying the development resources to unhook the two. No, instead they'll say "thank you, it has been a good run, you got years of use from what you paid us, and we even gave you free achievements along the way, but we've decided to go in a different direction, wish us luck (and fuck you)".

The money you paid them would have been better spent on hookers and blow.