Steam's Terms

Charging for use of Steam will never happen.

worst case would be a premium sub and free sub. Otherwise its very unlikely valve would ever introduce such a thing.

I don't think they will add a fee for steam, and if they do, people already on steam with games should be allowed to use steam for free

If they ban you, you still have your downloaded games. Therefore, you can download noCD cracks, as you purchased the games legally, and you own the right to do with them as you please.
Hence why I download all of my games. I mean, I don't expect to be banned, but yanno.

That was just an example. I highly doubt that they would add a fee, but hey they did make it. Now Valve is a respected company, but you can never be to sure about things.

If it comes to that, I would resort to the black market.

The only problem would be buying more hard drives :P

Such things like a fee to use it will probably never happen because Valve would lose more money than they would get.

When you registered for Steam you agreed to the ToS (have you actually read it?), Valve could do what they want and you can't do anything against this (but I think that the ToS in the EU are somehow invalid). And you also don't own the games on Steam, you just have a subscription to play them.

They won't ever charge to use Steam. Just like the consoles, the money is in the software sold... not the service itself. Consoles are even sold at a loss, just because they know they can recoup it on the game sales.

That you could loose your account for some unforeseen circumstance is a valid thing to worry about though. Vavle does not want to loose you as a customer so I very much doubt they would ban you for no reason... however, you could get hacked for example. Make sure your computer is virus-free and that your email is secure. If you use Gmail, look into their 2-step authentication feature so no one can get into your email account. If they do, there's a zero percent chance of you recovering your Steam account should you loose it.

I am against subscriptions like pay to play games with subscriptions. Would there be any chance that Valve might change their rules? I mean, you could go to some other place, buy games, and own them forever.

You know, as much as I don't believe it will ever happen, there's that little paranoid part of me that downloads everything just in case. And of course would then use some of, er, magic to make them all work. I'm against that sort of thing really and am well aware of the (lack of) legality to it, but if they ever decided to block me out for no fault of my own, I wouldn't hesitate.

This is why I try to not do anything wrong... On Steam, all I do is log on, play games, download more games, occasionally ask questions or answer them in forums, watch my language (just in case), and that's pretty much it... I used to do something that could get my account banned (account sharing with my brother but very rarely) but then I stopped because I didn't like him using my account, and then I found out it was against Steam's ToS so I told him never to get on it again... That and I added about 15 characters to my password so he won't be able to log in...

I just read the comments and I am amazed. You will stop buying games on Steam just because you learned that you merely have a subscription for them? Just... woah. I mean, you can easily go to the local video game shop and buy a physical copy for 4x price, then you will certainly have a game in your hands. Even though it is basically a subscription, you own the game when it is in your library, so you can access it at all times (Valve rarely revoke game keys). You do not need to worry about such things, I do not know how you came to this idea...

Heathen!!! Great GabeN will never betray us.

It is not uncommon to see courts overthrowing terms of service/use/etc. They are not the law. Even though the company can lawyer themselves up something fierce, the law is the law and often the terms of service/etc are outrageous to the point that the court doesn't take them into consideration. Also, not creating bad PR is common sense in the business world.

After reading your comments and thinking about it, I'm not going to worry about it. I'll continue buying and playing games on Steam as if nothing has changed. Thank you for talking about it and making me feel better.

So basically, I have nothing to worry about, and will be able to keep the games forever unless I got banned?

If you get banned you can still play/download your games on your account but you can't purchase new games, trade, or play multiplayer on secured servers(you can play multiplayer on unsecured servers). This was a new update to provide customers the feeling of "owning" their games.

Source Read the third subsection.