To be honest, I don't know much about it. It's important to know about it, because a reorganization is different than a liquidation and in either case if you own the debt you may or may not get anything out of it.

This is also what makes GOG so great because it can be really hard to figure out when a company goes bankrupt who is going to end up owning what assets, and some of the debt ends up being eaten by the party that loaned it in the first place.

Common stock holders being the last to get anything, and often times getting nothing at all.
Steam doesn't have a true offline mode. It's complicated, but if you change your hardware, reinstalled the OS or it's been more than 30 days, you have to log back in and get validated.

Which for some of us is a real issue, especially for those that like to tinker with our computers.

If the key relies on a server somewhere else to activate it's activation and is not a CD key. A CD key validates by checking a local algorithm. Every time you install that D2D game you will have to ask permission again. I don't know how else to say, I consider activation bad and I will not ask permission to play my games. I will not check in with Amazon to ask if I can read my books (and I do like Amazon as a company). I will not check with Sony to see if it's okay to listen to my music.

Steam's offline mode doesn't always work (if it decides it needs to connect, it will not let you play, period, there's no clicking "let me do it next time") and I won't always have the same Windows install. Ask anyone in the military how well Steam's offline mode works for them when they're deployed.

So you're saying pirate/crack the games I bought? Seriously? How about I skip the step of giving Steam my money in the first place and I can decide in 10 years if any of the games I would have bought from Steam today are worth pirating then? I already told you, I think they're detrimental to PC gaming and I won't be supporting them financially.

I won't be supporting Steam financially. I feel that anything that promotes invasive DRM and similar things of that nature are surely 'in bed' w/other institutions and societies that would like to profit off of you, taking more from you than what you'd ever like to give, and would seek to do so covertly and w/o fanfare (as doing things openly and w/fanfare would expose them, their true motive, & show their crutch to be a bogeyman).

There's more than enough fun to go around from GoG's current (and huge) catalogue, anyways.

Well, we seem to be at an impasse. I'm trying to attack the practical consequences of what you're saying, but you're more interested in defending the philosophical principle behind them, which I'm not so interested in, even though I can generally appreciate your position.

Let me propose a scenario. It's, say, 25 years from now. Hyper-intelligent apes rule the planet. Half Life Episode 3 has just been released. Small groups of Steam users have had problems over the years, but 99.9% of users have never had a single issue. One of these things seems very likely to happen. How would you feel? Would you feel that you've missed out on some great games and bargains over the last 25 years? I sure would. Would the lack of any of Steam's collapse or failure affect your views?

Or, as I suspect, is it the principle that more important? That is, the principle of not fully controlling what you bought is more important than whether or not the consequences of that come to pass, and is more important that missing out on whatever games or bargains could have come your way. Is it still worth taking that principled stand? I can't support you if think so...but I can grudgingly respect it.

I just wouldn't want to be the last man alive who hasn't played Portal.

I'm a huge Half Life fan, I even bought and played Blue Shift. I've never played Half Life 2. Yes, the principal is more important to me and there's tons of games for me to play for which I do not have to compromise my principals.

Besides in 25 years the sexbot will have been created and the human race will have come to an effective end. After the last of the humans has died off a sexbot will develop true AI and will play a pre-release copy of HL3. No human will ever lay eyes on it.

Haha, OK. I will also agree that there are plenty of games out there that don't ask you to compromise your principles. Who knows, maybe in 25 years everything will be DRM free, and people will be left wondering why they used a system that almost never stopped piracy in the first place.

And yes, the human race is basically doomed once they release a workable sexbot. Screw flying cars and jetpacks, the future I was promised back in the 80s owes me a Blade Runner style sexbot, with extra crazy installed for my convenience.

I wonder if the sexbot would come with DRM.

That would be interesting to see that.

Sony (which by this point will have abandoned the Playstation for the verdant profits of the sexbot industry) will package all their sexbots with DRM. Whenever you want to use your sexbot, a Sony spy-bot will be deployed to your home to observe your...sessions...and ensure that you are only using properly licensed Sony Sexbots-free of charge!

I think you're overexaagerating Adokat. Sony would never do that. They'd just include a DNA test, and if you fail you get a horrible STD.
Of course, sloppy Sony coding practices means that it never manages to actually identify you as the authorized user so everyone gets an STD. Sony will respond to accusations that it's software is broken by claiming there's nothing wrong with their software and we're all just not using it righ.....wait that's Apple

Our rights are being "managed" digitally via military surveillance satellites.

I've never played it and for whatever reason I have no interest in it of any kind. But you've brought it up several times which makes me think, "Man, this dude REALLY loves Portal." Between portal and the sexbot which wins?

Scientists are busy developing a way to combine the two :)

It's definitely the best Valve game I've played (the Half LIfe games are good, not great imo), so I submit that as the best reason to give Steam a try-it should be really cheap, and the game is only about 4 hours long. The game is still one of my favorite game experiences of all time. It totally snuck up on me, but I don't know if my experience would be the same if I'd played it after all that's been written about it.

I'm a huge Futurama fan. Lucy Liu wouldn't be my first choice though:)

Actually, Robot Lucy Liu is much hotter than actual Lucy Liu...