Foclock: You have a point, but I'm merely implying that they would provide services for a set period of time, if anything.
zeroxxx: Chance of Steam closing down in the near future is slim to none. With all they money they keep making, and the fact that they dwarf all other Digital Distributors combined, it is really not possible to see it happens anytime soon.
Also, even if Valve are out of business, some other companies will buy them likely. They will be the one to provide us with bandwith and servers to download our games.
large companies have fallen.... they're always the ones
everybody thought they were too big to actually fall.
I certainly don't see steam disappearing, say, next year. but give it enough time.
about the other distributors, well, all of them want to have their own client, and some of them have started not publishing their games on steam but only on their own client (battlefield saga comes to mind).
and other company buying them... that would happen ONLY if the other company thinks they can get their money back. but if steam falls, it will be quite hard to get any money back from there.....
since, you know, those things are not like, one day, Gabe decides to close.... it's more like they have a ton of debts which they can't pay.
... I'm off to play those capitalism games and guesstimate the chances of steam closing.