I don't like steam. I own a few games there but I'm not really crazy about the steam app and I see no need for it.
Also I don't really want them growing into the main standard of games distribution so we have to put up with it all the time. For that reason alone I skipped buying L4D and sadly I will not be buying DoW2 that I was looking forward to.
I don't like the idea of one company being able to simply deactivate all my games for whatever reason. Me moving to another country, my account being compromised and abused or any other reason you can think of. I'm just not going to give a company in another country with no phone customer service that kind of power over my gaming and entertainment.
To be honest right now with the vast amount of games and mods already available at very good bargains either at EB, here on GOG or other places I can keep myself entertained forever. If game companies insist on forcing DRM schemes down my throat on their new games I'll just enjoy what i currently have access to and pay 1/5 for the same game later on instead of getting it now.

It's more a matter of refusing to buy a product because it could stop working at any time purely on the whim of the company you bought it from. Make no mistake, Steam games are not purchases, they are rentals. They only work as long as Steam decides to let them work. Do something the folks at Steam take issue with, or wait for the day that Steam goes tits up, and your games are just useless bits taking up space on your drive. Now, if you're fairly confident that you'll have lost all desire to play the game before this point then this is probably a non-issue for you, and that's just fine. But understand that there are also those of us who will return to good games 10+ years later, and we'd really prefer that those games still work at that point.

Well, we'd hope that, but if you check all the stuff you signup for when you buy a game through them, they aren't obligated to give you a back up.
also, "tits"

No company is ever "safe" from going under. Valve is doing quite well at the moment, but there's no way to predict what the market will look like or what decisions Valve's management will have made 5 or 10 years down the line. Additionally, even if Valve continues to do well there's the possibility that at some point in the future they'll simply choose to discontinue Steam in favor of some other distribution model, with the potential to leave Steam users in a lurch (look up MSN Music Store, Yahoo Music Store, MLB video downloads). As for the promises that games will be unlocked if Valve goes under or Steam is discontinued, as those promises are not legally binding they mean fuck all. Until Valve announces that patches to unlock all Steam games have been written and are being held in escrow users should consider the case of Steam being discontinued to mean the loss of all their games.

Sorry, but this is a complete lie....I travel a lot, live in the UK and study in the US, and they've never even contacted me about it!
Also, on a random note, Valve have stated quite a few times that if they were ever to go under, they'd release a permanent off-line patch for their games on the forums.

Thats the kind of thing I'd like to see happen after say 6 months of a game's release. Anyone who's going to pirate COD27 will do so the day after the game goes gold and someone from the duplication company leaks it to torrent sites. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of piracy happens within the first month.

Seriously though, do you honestly think that a company that's going under is going to be at all concerned with releasing a patch so you can play your old, already paid-for games? Seriously? That's likely the last thing that would be on their minds. They'd have far more urgent things to worry about.

People are very quick to post examples of services that shafted their customers, but what about those that did what they could to help? Take the DD service used by Prey. When that went belly up, it worked with 2K to ensure its customers still had access to Prey. They arranged to have retail versions shipped to their customers -- then when Valve also stepped in, those affected ended up with two copies of the game (the retail copies sent to them) and the second copy on Steam from the reuse of their original key.
But hey, nothing anyone says is ever going to stop a disbeliever from disbelieving until proven otherwise, same with those who believe. So, hey, if you don't want to use Steam, don't. If people do want to use it, then fine. They can.

It's quite true that there have been some companies who have handled such things quite well. Thus the take-home message should be that until a company is actually in such a situation there's no guarantee on how they'll act.
That's exactly the point. People simply need to be aware of what exactly Steam is and what the possible concerns about it are; if they are then just fine with using it that's their call and if they're happy with it then great. By the same token there are those of us who aren't that keen on the potential issues with Steam, and thus we don't use it, which should also be just fine. An issue only arises when someone thinks that because they like or don't like Steam that others should feel the same way; fortunately there are only a few isolated cases of such thinking in this thread.

Well said. I'll just add that a major part of the issue is also that of forcing people to use/install the Steam client for a retail game (such as in FEAR 2, Dawn of War 2, and Empire:Total War) when they either don't like Steam or have no use for it (or both), which is what this thread was originally about.

saying something, and being legally obligated to do something, are two different things my friend. :D

You guys really don't know Valve very well. Stop being so cynical, it's irritating. Valve isn't like Microsoft: They actually respect their customers and the PC gaming community as a whole. That's why they're 100% against paying for DLC and throw so much support towards the modding community (and watch the modding community for ideas [e.g., Portal, Left 4 Dead]).

It's moot point anyway. The only way we'll ever find out what will really happen is if Valve goes under. Not likely to happen any time soon. Personally, that's the least of my concerns/complaints with Steam anyway.

Even if they do go under and don't release the free access patch, I'm certain some dodgy cracking team will do it.