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That will be 10 or 20 years from now, Steam's convenience is today. If it really becomes an issue, some form of piracy will always be available to recover those games.

20 years ago games came on floppies and ran on DOS. If I want to play one today, the legality of my copy is really the least of the hurdles.

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Not really. I still play Master of Orion on a regular basis, and it came out in 1991. Same with the original Civilization from 1990.

The reason I can still play these games is because I have a copy of them. That's the point in question here. Do I really have a copy of Portal 2? It's on my computer now, sure. But will I be able to fire it up and reminisce in 2031?

That was true for games that came out prior to mass dialup and then mass broadband. Since then I have an ever increasing stack of games (and other software) that are unplayable as companies decided that keeping the auth servers up was too expensive (or the company folded, the IPs were sold off and the auth servers brought down). Either way, that disc is pretty much a meaningless waste of space now. BTW, anyone want this awesome System Shock 2 coaster?

The sheer mass of games that depend on steam and the number of companies involved do a lot to ensure that people will act to keep it up far more so than single-game servers.

You realize we're saying the same thing, right?

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