All I'm going to say is that I am going to keep buying newer games on Steam, and I will be sure to let everyone know when my games and account disappear and I am screwed out of hundreds of dollars. But really, even if that did happen, I feel like the software required to crack my useless game files into what I paid for would spread through the internet with a ferocious speed and efficiency.

I find it interesting that from the fact that this clause is in use by almost every digital distributor, you conclude that it is less likely that it could ever actually happen. Surely there is faulty logic at work there, no?

Yeah, the only time I ever had Steam's Offline mode actually working correctly, was when I didn't actually have an internet connection (while I was changing ISPs). If you actually have your PC connected to the net, offline mode will not work correctly. And some games, even when offline mode works (and despite being updated and being single player games) can still fail to run due to being "disabled" for offline mode. I know one game was recently patched to fix that, but I forget which one.

I don't think it less likely to happen, but less likely to have happened.

Uhm, and why? This doesn't change the faulty logic, you know.

because I believe the majority of people online are full of shit. some random noob starts posting "omg my steam games are gone!" because he forgot his login or something, and then some how that idiot's story get's escalated into "he was cheating on cs:s with a custom texture and valve deleted all his games from his account."

Which has absolutely no bearing on that clause being common in the industry. If your argument is that people are morons, then you're probably right, although that really isn't an argument for why this could absolutely never have happened, but if that's the case then don't bring the TOS into it.

It's not an argument for why it's never happened, it's an argument for "this probably hasn't happened as much as you hear, because people are idiots."

Ah, see now you say "as much as you hear", while before you said it was a "myth". There's quite a big difference.

sometimes what I say and what i mean are two different things, I honestly think if someone's steam games were removed, it was probably for good reason and that person probably won't talk about it to a grand scale.

I meant, in particular to steam.

Nope, it seems that all Steam games use GCF files. They're like ISO files, and that only custom files/savegames are there in your account folder. Or something like that.

Only some Source engine games and Valve games are using *.gcf files. Dark Messiah, RACE games, Half-Life 1, The Orange Box games. New Valve titles like L4D is not using *.gcf and all 3rd party games are also not using *.gcf. All 3rd party games are similar to retail release only *.exe files is protected by Valve.

Well, it's either GCF/NCF.