How clever. Why would an app start throwing errors after a month disconnected from the web unless said behavior was programmed there on purpose?

I'm pretty sure i played HL2 at least 2 months after going offline... it took me that long to set up internet access in a new country. But you might be right.
Disabling auto updates and patching is pretty easy.. and there are lots of other things you can turn off too if you don't want them.

Why would you be against customer freedoms?

he works for Activision

Because of reasons already stated... games do not lose value when being passed around, persons 2-10 get the same game experience as person 1, but only person 1 contributed to the development of the game.
I like games, I want games to make money so more games are made.

Anyways, if anyone's Steam account gets permanently deactivated, you can always just crack Steam and play your games.
Sure, it might technically be illegal, but I think most of us would agree that it's still ethical.

Oh ok, so that's your personal stance then. You believe people should make that choice, but be free to make other choices?

Sorry, but I will not stop buying games from Steam. I like Steam. I like having everything in this giant list, and instead of hunting through my drawers packed with crap, I just scroll down an inventory, click the one I want to play, and Mr. Steam goes and retrieves it for me (most of the time). You're free to do whatever you want, but I'm sticking with Steam.

And when the robots take over, you won't be able to play any of your games. BOARD GAMES FOR LIFE!

Yeah.
Since I am very much of the opinion that my boxed games should last forever and I should never be restricted from playing gams I paid for, it would be hard for me to come up with any real way to prevent used sales that dosn't also impact consumer rights to play the games they purchased.
I am against Steam because one day they could disable your account, or all accounts, removing my ability to play games I "own." I am against install limits and such because I should always be able to play the game I purchased, even 20 years from now. I am against online activation because one day those servers will be down and the company is under no legal obligation to patch-out the server check.
I guess my point is the resale aspect itself is not what angers me about Steam and similar programs... I don't think people should be reselling games anyway.

I have a TB hard drive and have pretty much every game I own installed... that way I can have a master games forlder and just scroll through it, as you can with Steam. Same thing, really, and if you use "cracks" to remove disc-checks, they start right up the same way.
The tiny amount of effort to do this is well worth actually owning your games, for all intents and purposes, rather than paying to access games on a service that can be taken away from you at any time.

When I loan a book, DVD or music CD to a friend or have one loaned to me it has not lost any value either. The ability to reuse and resell physical items without any strings attached is a basic consumer right regardless of what form that item takes. DRM such as Steam is simply an attempt to undermine this and seize a bigger piece of the pie.
Books, films and music have survived just fine with reuse and resale (just look at libraries and video rental stores), so why should it be any different for games? The games industry is already bigger and more profitable than music and films combined and it is just going to keep on growing year after year. Good developers never go hungry in this industry.
Developers that cry and moan about how second-hand sales and/or piracy have killed their profits are either too greedy for a share of profits they have no right over or simply produced a lousy product not enough people wanted to buy and hang onto anyway. The more awesome a game is the more likely pirate "renters" are to buy it and the less likely people are to trade in used copies, which reduces both piracy and the number of second-hand copies on the market.

w00t w00t!

I agree on the Steam issue, read my later post.
The rest of it I don't fully agree on, but going through it point by point is pointless. I don't think games and books are the same thing, and more important their target markets are radically different to the extreme. And good developers do get shut down. All. The. Time.
Also, the PC market as a whole would be treated as more important and with more respect if it had more sales, so every sale counts in my opinion.
In the end, if I play a game I want the creators and investors that allowed that game to exist to get something from it. That's my personal philosophy. It is extremely obvious a lot of people don't give a crap about that, and then they also complain games their style aren't being made anymore, which I find ironic.
That's me though.

I would put money down on the majority of good developer closures is due to them getting shit support and remuneration from publishers

WOW.
No, they do give a crap, it's just that they don't put games above people holding on to their rights.
Reality check, you don't like games more than the rest of us and you're not the only one who wants to see the talented people who make games having sucess and being rewarded for their talent, and to tell you the truth, you constastly trying to hint otherwise cause you lack any actual arguments regarding your resale 'logic' comes across as a tad arrogant...
Games are great. People not being cheated out of their rights, definitely better.