Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

As far as I can tell, every delisted Steam game I own is still in my account.

I mean, alot of content services suck, but Steam killed game piracy IMHO. 90% off sales and such.

It's exceedingly rare, but there's one case where a game can disappear from your Steam library: keys.

Game developers/publishers have the ability to revoke keys at any point, and that can result in games disappearing from your library.

I'm yet to hear of Valve themselves making a purchase inaccessible, but I have had keys get revoked. For example, free Gleam keys that add shovelware to your library.

Even games that Valve banned from sale on Steam can be activated and added to your account using keys. I believe that people who purchased the game also get to keep their purchase even if it's later banned from sale.

The full section G (except iii):

G. Restrictions on Use of Content and Services

You may not use the Content and Services for any purpose other than the permitted access to Steam and your Subscriptions, and to make personal, non-commercial use of your Subscriptions, except as otherwise permitted by this Agreement or applicable Subscription Terms. Except as otherwise permitted under this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use), or under applicable law [1] notwithstanding these restrictions, you may not, in whole or in part, copy, photocopy, reproduce, publish, distribute, translate, reverse engineer, derive source code from, modify, disassemble, decompile, create derivative works based on, or remove any proprietary notices or labels from the Content and Services or any software accessed via Steam without the prior consent, in writing, of Valve.

You are entitled to use the Content and Services for your own personal use, but you are not entitled to: (i) sell, grant a security interest in or transfer reproductions of the Content and Services to other parties in any way, nor to rent, lease or license the Content and Services to others without the prior written consent of Valve, except to the extent expressly permitted elsewhere in this Agreement (including any Subscription Terms or Rules of Use); (ii) 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 [2], tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services, use of a utility program or any other techniques now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose including, but not limited to network play over the Internet, network play utilizing commercial or non-commercial gaming networks or as part of content aggregation networks, websites or services, without the prior written consent of Valve; [...]

First of all I'm not a lawyer, so don't take any of the following seriously.

[1] is interesting, because in many jurisdictions some of the mentioned restrictions are allowed, so they can be safely ignored. E.g. reverse engineering programs running on your own device is legal in the EU [3].

At [2] Valve writes it is forbidden to:

emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation

I don't know exactly what they mean with "Content and Services", do they include the game itself with this statement? Steam games usually have a SDK from Valve in them, so probably yes.

Protocol redirection has to be allowed else they could go after routers etc. But they specifiy "protocol emulation", which is how goldberg works if I understand correctly. The reverse engeering of the protocol is probably allowed, if it is done purely by observation.

I really have no idea if the restriction on emulating protocols is legal. Though if it was illegal I bet Nintendo would have already gone after Switch emulators.

Luckily there aren't any lawsuits against emulators since that could set a bad precedent for the entire software industry. A similar bad case was Oracle v. Google on Java, which luckily was in favor of Google (not sure I'd ever say that ;D).

And if someone doesn't agree to the terms of service since they don't use Steam, they might be in the clear. Obviously they'd have to obtain a copy of the game, which would most probably be illegal.

[3] https://www.vidstromlabs.com/blog/the-legal-boundaries-of-reverse-engineering-in-the-eu/

Valve probably includes the clause about removing games from your library because of illegal games (for whatever reason, e.g. someone uploaded without being the rightholder) and malware. If a developer turns evil it makes sense to remove the game and the developer from the platform. Usually if a game is no longer sold because of licences running out (car games, ...), Valve keeps the games in the library of people who already bought it, since the licence covers it.

I judge companies according to their (probable) track record. Valve has been great for the most part and I don't see it changing for the forseeable future with GabeN in charge. If the company changes ownership (going public, getting bought etc) I'm definitly going to be more careful and backup the games. Thanks to Goldberg they can still be played even if Steam was shutting down.

Sorry for the big wall of text, I'm just reading and trying to collect my thoughts and understanding of the matter. It's a great question though. If you've read it actually through I'm glad if you can point out any errors or add any thoughts. As I said, I'm a layman.

network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services

My interpretation is: "don't fuck with Steam's functionalities or network communications"

It has nothing to do with console emulators.

One interesting thing about Valve, especially when people start talking negatively about Epic in relation to Steam, is that they have attempted to argue in court that Steam is a subscription based service. It did not work out for them, but the end goal was them wanting to say that they did not have to provide access to purchased titles.

Fwiw the original GRID and FUEL games both published by Codemasters have been unavailable for purchase for some years now, and though there's no longer a Steam page for them now I still have access to them in my library and have played both fairly recently.

I read the agreement a while ago to look for this kind of thing and found that it contains a clause that said something to the effect of "steam won't revoke the access of individuals but it can do so for groups of people". Sounded like a clause for if they lose the licence to distribute a game and have to pull it from a region or something, but they could define the group however they want.

Damn they banned Disco and Rimworld in Oz?

Steam can definitely remove your access to games in your account. Though, to be fair, it generally doesn't, as it has little incentive to do so (outside of such cases as credit card chargebacks). There are a few cases though.

(Note of course that games delisted from sale in the store are generally not removed from accounts.)

To be fair, other stores certainly could too. But something like GOG is limited in what it can do, if you've been properly backing up your files, since you can still access your own offline installers even if you completely lose access to your account.

That said, as far as dangers to your Steam account go, I'd say that individual games getting removed is probably less likely than one of the following:

• you losing access due to not being able to login for whatever reason (e.g. forgot your stuff and also lost your phone but you had Steam's 2FA going so you can't login)
• getting your account stolen by a hijacker (which there are TONS and there have been for years due to the profitability of virtual item fraud and account fraud and the synergies between these two activities). If Steam screws up their side of things, this might even happen through no fault of your own -- for example, a bunch of people got hijacked several years ago when hijackers discovered that Steam's password recovery page would accept a blank input.
• having your account banned for whatever reason. Probably less likely if you're well-behaved and don't cheat and don't talk about piracy on Steam, etc., but it's worth noting that this could happen. Also, if you dabble in cheats and your account gets VAC banned, I'd imagine that having to use a new account ends up being kinda similar to being banned from your old one, due to the hassle of having to switch accounts.

There's an old story about Gabe Newell saying that if Steam ever shuts down Valve will make sure players are able to access their games, but there's a few problems with this:

• It's not actually in the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
• This is old info anyway.
• Given how big Steam is, it's more likely to be sold off than to go dark if Valve finds itself in financial trouble. And even if GabeN has truly promised this, the new owners of Steam are not beholden to such a promise.

As for Steam emulators, like SmartSteamEmu, I'm pretty sure they're not allowed but Valve just largely turns a blind eye to them and will do so unless they become a very significant issue in some way.