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We weep openly and go outside into the sun.

Valve releases that DLL that lets games by played without the client, essentially turning all games DRM-free. People will have 30-90 days to download the games and store them on somewhere, before the servers shut down.
Assuming they live in the European Union. In Murica and other places, they can just use that little part of the service agreements that turn all games into actually indefinite licenses, and practise their right to revoke the license at a given time, meaning they just shut down and that is it.
(And meanwhile, everyone who shopped at GOG and Humble Store to a degree, just chuckles and shrugs.)

Don't worry little one, you and everybody you know will be long dead before Steam dies.

Shout, shout, let it all out, these are the things I can do without

It's not going to shut down unless people suddenly either 1. Stop playing/buying games (this is very unlikely to happen) 2. Someone starts targeting gamers (we are legion, so this is impractical as fuck) 3. Nuclear war, mass EMPs or another form of massive technological infrastructure destruction takes place (The world will have bigger problems than just steam being gone if this is the case). 4. A competitor establishes themselves and offers better prices than what steam is offering (probably impractical and will need to be a major undertaking for the competitor). In short Steam is a market place that has established itself as trustworthy and reliable enough to make it highly unlikely and impractical for Steam to be simple shutdown. It would need to be something big.

Two words: GOG Connect.

We will have to search for a new place on duckduckgo since bing and google will be shutdown as well.

Valve is a company that have more than 100 million accounts. And the biggest thing is: many people dont WANT to switch to other services, even when they offer cheaper (or even free) games. So they are unique in that aspect.

shut down*

If it gets shoutdown? A whole lot of screaming I guess.

I'm pretty sure a company would buy steam if so.

Never thought that actually, Steam would share something like setup? or iso versions by only activated with your key? But I dont think how would run in massive multiplayer games.

I shoutdown to steam all the time - nothing happens :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NKqhqIN3Zc

nothing

We'll be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://i.imgur.com/4sa1Ln6.jpg

I will raise my jolly roger and sail into the open sea

you lose everything. I highly doubt valve will be allowed to strip away steamworks (ie make those games essentially DRM free) so that they can tell you to download and back up your games - and it stands to reason that if steam was no longer financially viable, valve wouldnt have the funds (nor would they really care to use whatever funds they had left) to create some kind of alternate database with some other provider for you to access the games from.

basically its good to remind yourself every now and then, that you dont own software, you simply have a non-transferable licence to use it for whatever period its available.

They couldn't shit their business pants that badly even if they tried, if they somehow miraculously managed though - you'd know and smell it from a mile. But that wouldn't be anytime soon - by then just about any game you have on steam is less worth than it is already. Looking back at it as if there the Nintendo 64 Emulator collection you just download on a whim ... I tell ya, once VR is good and there's games worth playing - steams old games will be nothing but a reminder of the past with a bunch of them re-released for the xx-time,

You could shout it up so it isn't shoutdown anymore

It will be the day the PC faction suffers a critical blow in the Console Wars. With its flagship burning and sinking beneath the waves, the PC gamer will look up and shout out "Save us" and Nintendo will whisper "no"
You're a reflection of society, all the passion that we can feel
How I love your sense of justice, and your trench-coated games of steel.
Even if we're facing Armageddon, it doesn't matter what they do, Atom bomb or giant squid, here's looking at you, kid,

Interesting question... I searched about it and I found this.
Somehow, it is close to the truth, besides the fact that I don't agree that Valve has no obligation whatsoever. This no obligation clause goes against laws of LOTS of users countries. Only time (and/or eventually justice) will be able to tell what will happen in a situation like this. My personal opinion is that the DRM-Free for a reasonable time to backup the games is the most possible option.

I will cry if Steam get shoutdown.

No more Steam Sale??

View attached image.

What scares me a lot more than Steam shutting down entirely is the prospect of some hostile takeover, by something big and bad, like M$, Apple or Google (to name just a few). What if one of those bought the whole Steam platform to integrate it into their own services or to get rid of that pesky competition? While I don't really like the data mining by Valve, I fear that it would be much worse if Google and Co. owned the service.