Yes, if Steam folds and you bought Skyrim, and Bethesda has not made Valve revoke licenses sold, then you can play Skyrim as much as you want legally. You can no longer use Steam's services. There are then 4 options which may or may not be viable for you:

1 - You play a backup version you made before (in an offline client mode)
2 - There is patch released removing the DRM by Bethesda (they may opt for a different type of DRM)
3 - There is a general open-Steam-patch released by Valve (Newell have hinted before that this is the way they want to go if it comes to it), effectively making CEG inert
4 - You use Pirate Bay's services instead of Steam's to play your legally licensed game.

And a lot the depends on what happens next.

I'm probably more paranoid than most. I don't trust my understanding of internet security to be good enough to be able to detect whether my computer has been compromised or not. Hence I resort to a very cheap and very effective firewall: keeping my important computers offline.

Being online certainly has its uses. I couldn't post here if I wasn't online. But if someone were to attack this computer right now, all they're going to find out is what websites I've visited since I last refreshed this computer. For things like internet banking, I use a completely different computer. And for my own documents and games, I use other computers too, which never go online.

I accept that most people would just use one computer for all of these things, but I'm not comfortable with the risks since I know my own limitations.
I think many Steam users believe this otherwise they'd probably not be buying as many games as they do.

However, there are two issues here.

Firstly, Valve has made no legal agreement to remove the DRM if they shut down.

Secondly, most companies only shut down long after all the money's gone - the director's are usually in a state of denial that they will be able to turn the company around if they just borrow a little more cash... So even if they did agree to remove the DRM, there might be no money left for them to comply with the agreement. And if the developer has already folded as well, then there's no one left to patch out the DRM.

I think what irks me as that in this type of situation, we expect the pirates to save the day.

Well, i dont download and save the gog installers of game just for fun, i only download them when i want to play them and delete afterwards -> thus as someone who player from home with steady internet connection, i dont feel my games are any more or less safe with either gog or steam.

Its digital world these days and stuff that exits on some server "somewhere else" never be totally at your own control. And i am actually just fine with that.

Oh, for the love of ...
Would it be possible, perhaps, for once, as an exception, that you provide actual evidence for a claim that you're making?

Please link to _one_ official statement that such a claim could be based on. Just one. And no, vague allusions from volunteer moderators do not count.

Second, how exactly is a DRM "not within the game itself" if the game executable needs to check it? How is that even supposed to work? Have you ever tried to uninstall Steam and start the game executable? What do you think why that doesn't work, when the DRM is "notwithin the game itself"?

Third, we know from developers how Steam contracts look like and that they do _not_ contain any clauses about DRM removal. So how do you suppose should such a removal be performed _without_ breaking the contract?

Also, what is your legal expertise exactly?

Seriously, this "But Steam said they will remove the DRM" meme is reaching the state of Godwin's law. Whoever digs it out and _still_ presents it as credible has is basically removing himself from being taken seriously automatically ...

Yes, this was big on the internet when it came out, but when thinking longer this sounds more like a marketing gag. Actually Valve would be in deep legal trouble (most probably) if they would do it. So I guess this is no real option and should be regarded as a conciliation of the users who are afraid. That's all. I don't think it is bad per se, only that it shouldn't be listed as a viable option. I'm totally with you although I don't understand who called you a pirate and where for wanting games being released on GOG. It doesn't seem to make sense at all.

As for piracy, maybe it is higher on Steam than on GOG or the other way around, nobody knows. But we customers shouldn't bother with this but buy our games where we like them most. For me this is GOG of course.

Steam is at the point of being too big to fall.

Even if Valve fell into financial troubles, somebody would just buy them.

Steam will outlive all of your HDDs you keep your GOG copies on. And seriously, making backups of digital content is absurd for me. The most important reason why I switched to digital is I don't want to store everything locally.

If anything happens to GOG, I'll have the internet as the most reliable backup service for my games.

By the way, I never had trouble with accessing my Steam content.

GOG content? Well, GOG PR staff thought it's super funny to make a stunt about shutting down without a warning and cutting me off from my games. It's GOG, where games or extra content disappears without a warning, sometimes irreversibly (Atlantis soundtracks). It's also GOG where site bugs cause people's game shelves to disappear games.

So far, Steam seems to be much more reliable.

Stop putting weight on shit people say (me included), especially strangers on the internet. Those people are either dumb or hypocrites, do you really care about what they say? Some GoG releases are on torrent sites (quite easy to check). I don't know how good or bad that is. You have to understand that there are now a few generations of people that grew up with Steam (and not only Steam) and enduring DRM of all sorts. Hell the MPAA has some American schools enrolled in a so called anti-piracy curriculum http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/09/24/1235226/california-elementary-schools-to-test-anti-piracy-curriculum which will further indoctrinate people into thinking that they're thieves unless the MPAA, RIAA or BSA tells them otherwise.

He he. The linked article is badly written or just low level journalism. You cannot deduct that something was pirated less just because it was not pirated in the first moment. It only means that the Steam DRM of Witcher 2 wasn't effective and that international hackers for some reason don't like to go the easy way. (Show offs)

It's not like GOG games versions cannot be found on the internet.

That's what I thought of Microsoft too and then came Apple and Google. But agreed, they will most probably not go down within the next three years.

Of course I like GOG more, because their installers are just simple and plain, but my impression is that GOG should work harder on the service part (community, website, support responses, communication). They have enough good ideas in their community wishlist - just need to work much more on it. Otherwise I fear they will not decrease the distance to Steam, never.

I don't think anyone is ever too big to fall. Just think of Enron.

However, there are other dangers to a company being too big... it becomes a monopoly, and when it falls the damage is far greater.

For all those celebrating the demise of GFWL, they've really just been given one less basket to put their eggs in.

I do not see why, as it is only revoking one of many of Steamworks features. It is up to the publishers / devs to make use of it, and there is probably the same little print on the contract regarding CEG as all the other Steamworks features, i.e. that Valve can revoke it at any time.

If it comes to it, a publisher can then release an official patch patching in other DRM if they want, but if such a contract is signed than they have no legal matters against Valve. Then they may just as attach valve for taking away achievements or matchmaking features if Steam folds.

There is no monopoly in such market. Yes, steam is dominant, but will NEVER become a monopolist.

Cost of running a digital store are just too small for it to happen. If sites like Dotemu or Greenmangaming or nuuvem can exist even though selling a fraction of what steam sells, it means there always will be an alternative.

And some other big guys are just not interested in being steam exclusive, because why would they?

Good! Then I can relax then.

In that case, I hope companies like Bethesda only went the Steam exclusive route because Steam gave them a discount that exceeded the lost sales to ex-customers like me.

Hang on... What the...!!!!

No.
I don't need to "find" old hardware, I already have it. Plenty of it. Enough of it.
If I even needed some legacy hardware, it's out there. Plenty of it you can even get for free even without knowing the right people.
The above is mostly irrelevant. Why? Because I only need to start worrying about this once something completely breaks backwards compatibility. That's not happening anytime soon, if ever - what would the point be in throwing good stuff you already have, stuff people rely on, out the window? Even if such a thing happened, you can simply AVOID the products that do this. If ALL products suddenly switch - all you need to do is get the latest ones which HAVE NOT.
The above is, also, mostly irrelevant. Why? Because after enough time passes and computing power increases, you can simply use software to emulate hardware. This solution works as long as there are emulators around, which I can't see why they would disappear at any point.
Can't play new cloudy-streamy games? Play new NON-cloudy-streamy games. Are you suggesting that ALL of gaming will disappear into a puff of Internet-only-accessed smoke? Even in such a case - there will still be enough classics to play through. Also - we could simply write our own games.
Even if the world physically came to every house, broke every computer with a hammer, and replaced it with a closed platform that you can't modify all that much... people would just hack it. You'd need a nuclear apocalypse to put a decent dent in PC gaming, and this would only be the case because we'd have more important things to worry about than scavenging the wasteland for scraps of electronics to run games on.

You cannot really prove that everything will go to hell in the future, especially in a fashion that goes against everything one can see in the present. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a game to play on Steam...

I do!