Weclock, if steam goes under and they release a patch to allow all the games to still be played, you will have to retract everytime you ever said steam was a rental service. Calling steam a rental service is an opinion until we know for sure that steam users will or will not be able to coninute playing their games in the future.

I highly doubt the quality of steam, as a whole.
Yes yes, we get it now. You're a broken record.

Well firstly there's no legal requirement for them to do this post-disaster customer friendly version of the client and since there's likely to be legal reasons NOT to (mostly for 3rd party titles), I'd personally err on the side of assuming the users will be abandoned. Basically I'm in a "Pics or it didn't happen" mindset. Doesn't really worry me since I doubt the service will fold but I'd still like to see actual proof of their good intentions
Secondly the rental thing is indeed an opinion but the burden of proof is on valve to show that its not. If they were to release a test build of the post-disaster client to a few trusted third parties for independant verification then I'd be 100% satisfied with my ability to play Trine, Republic Commando and Dawn Of War 2 in the future. Even half life 2 if I ever get in the mood for something boring and generic

if it's a secret, what makes you so sure?
prove it.
regardless of whether or not they go under, you still won't be able to play your games should they disable you.

I think MSN Music is a good predictor of what will happen when Steam eventually shuts down. When this happens to Steam, they will have no incentive or motivation to behave differently.

Steam has said in the past that they would allow users to play their games if steam goes under. Truth is they DON"t have to honor that. But fact is we don't know what will happen. You can't prove that steam won't allow players to coninue playing and I can't prove that they will. This is why we will have to wait to see what happens, and until then, calling steam a rental service is nothing more than opinion. I hope you understand that point. If you can offer valid proof, (that would mean undeniable facts, not your word, which is opinion) that steam will not give players a way to continue playing their games if they go under, I will agree with you. If you can't do that, then you can't blame me or anyone else for saying the statement "Steam is a rentla service" is an opnion and what I have said still stands and stands strong.

And I'll raise you what happened when Triton shut down. And oh look, Valve were one of the companies to pick up the pieces.

But valve CAN prove it by releasing this patch to a few trusted third parties for an independant review.

But valve CAN prove it by releasing this patch to a few trusted third parties for an independant review.
And risk someone connected to those parties leaking said patch to people who would further use it for less than legal means? Of course they're not going to risk that.
But the fact is simple. Even *IF* Valve went out of business, Steam is large enough to attract several interested parties who would purchase it and continue supplying the service to the existing customer base.
And in the highly unlikely event that current games are no longer available, just go get a "fix", plenty already exist out there for Steam based games.

I don't imagine Valve will ever go out of business... what you say is true, but the only way I see Steam shutting down is in the event that gaming changes so fundementally no one cares about that kind of service/gaming anymore.
That day probably will come, but not for a long, long time. Even then, Valve would probably run the service on a very bare bones level for continued access to old games and accounts.

This is why I used the term "trusted". Hell they can even send someone along to personally smash the hard drive of the test computer after the test is complete to stop anything but the report on the patch getting out
Again as I've said, it doesn't seem likely because as you correctly stated someone would buy them even if it was EA

People who use the service regularly have told me so. If you attempt to install too many times in a short period, it will ask you to contact customer support. Kind of the same thing as Windows or other Microsoft products.
Between D2D, SecuROM activations, TAGES activations and Steam, I will take Steam every time. That's just me.
A simple disc check or no DRM what-so-ever? Retail is best.

This is no secret. I was poking around their site a couple of days ago and they had it in big letters. I think it was on their faq page. But it is there saying that if you run out of activations, then you must contact support. But they made it sound like that was only a formality and that they would grant you more activations.
I'm with Weclock, show people that you do have this unlocker or it's not true. But I also don't think Steam will close up either. If Valve gets in bad financial shape, Steam will be sold to someone else. That's the way business is done. So this unlocker, if it does exist, will never be used. And don't ever think Valve could never go under. Bigger and more important companies than Valve have disappeared. My biggest worry about Steam, isn't what Valve is doing (although I don't trust any company to do things for their customers out of the goodness of their heart), but what a successor company will do.

Valve is a private company though, they would have to choose to sell themselves, or to sell Steam. I some catastrophe occurs and they need the money, then it could happen, but I think the chances of that are slim.
As someone who only buys Steam games when there is a great deal, I can also say that it would not be obscenely expensive to replace my Steam copies someday. I have actually done that on occassion, like if gogamer has a great madness sale and one of the sub-$5 games is a Steam game I own, I will get it for the backup physical copy without DRM.