This is in reference to a post titled Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.. The title is kind of self-explanatory and piracy was brought up in the comments. Someone mentioned GOG and Steam granting users indefinite licenses to users regardless of whether or not the game is still being sold.
While I could see that with GOG something tells me that's probably not the case with Steam but I can't find a specific quote to back it up. I can't seem to find an instance of them removing a game from someone's library even when a game was banned in a country like in the case of Disco Elysium and Rimworld being banned in Australia.
I couldn't see Valve removing games from people's libraries without a good reason due to the amount of backlash that would cause but maybe under specific circumstances they would.
On a similar note I was curious if anything in the terms and conditions talks about Steam emulators. There's a section it that says:
“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”
But I am not sure if I am misunderstanding what it's trying to get across.
I looked through a majority of the Steam Subscriber Agreement but it can be a bit hard to decipher. There could also be comments from Valve staff elsewhere like on Twitter or Reddit that may at least shown their thoughts on the matter.
This might be a bit boring for a lot of people but I am curious about the DRM behind Steam. I feel like people have placed a lot of trust and money into Valve and Steam so I am curious about potential worst case scenarios.
I think there are very few accounts of them actually removing games from people's libraries so far. When looking around I found Codename: Gordon and Order of War. Both were done for good reasons and with the permission from the developers from what I can tell.
Only times I’ve had games removed so far was because of activating a duplicate key from a keyshop, and the message I got from Valve was reasonable and non-threatening about it. Just got a replacement key to activate and nothing since.
I even activated keys I bought from keyshops for the original GTA trilogy after it was already delisted. They didn’t complain, I still have the install option.
A few people have mentioned similar things and it's a bit of a different situation. For all Steam knows you got that code in a Humble Bundle and are just now getting around to activating it. A bit more of an extreme example would be Prey (2006) which was removed from Steam I think in 2009 (oddly enough because they ran out of keys) but yet you can still find and buy keys for the game.
What I am talking about would be more like Afro Samurai 2, Alan Awake, or Star Control where games were explicitly removed due to some kind of special circumstance and not replaced. Would there be a point where Steam simply has to remove a game from a users library?
Likely the only time you’ll have that happen are due to copyright infringement assets, finding extremely objectionable things in it, etc. Even if something was delisted because of expired licensing (see Deadpool, etc), any copies bought before then should still be installable. Like you said, pretty sure any full removal has to be under exceptional circumstances.