'To rent' sounds more like: 'To pay for using something for a limited period of time'. There is no time limit on Steam, so that's something between renting and ownership.
So, my opinion would change a little... I would suspect they'll use this excuse to remove something from my library in the future.

That's not what makes GOG different from the rest. Supposedly, Gabe Newell said similar things about Steam, and in both cases it's nothing but a rumored promise that doesn't mean jack when worse comes to worse. The actual difference is that in the case of GOG you don't have to rely on promises because you can backup your games right away.

This is true, however I had not seen this comment regarding the same from steam. The difference is I can actually believe the rumor of GOG doing it, I dont think steam gives a fuck at the end of the day

the difference is that Steam can enforce a revoke of a license, gOg trust the users to delete the software themselves.

I wasn't talking about licenses being withdrawn by publishers, but about third parties like Steam or GOG shutting down, so that you don't have access to their services anymore. In the case of many Steam titles that would result in making them unplayable without a crack, regardless of whether the publishers revoked the license or not. In the case of GOG your games would be safe if you thought about backing them up before the event.

EDIT: To be fair, I think Reaver894 was talking about both service shutdown and revoking of licenses, so I see where you're coming from.

The awesomeness of Ride to Hell?

You bet I would be pissed if they removed it :)

Which in practice means that if the trust is warranted then there's no difference between the options.

If it's revokable, it's not selling, is it?

Steam is rental without a due date.

No I will always hate steam.

They *have* exercised that, for at least one product in the past.

Yeah, my testing confirms this too. I completely removed my wireless adapter from my computer and played games on that computer for months. Several months. Was going to let it go a year, but decided after several months that perhaps it was better to go ahead and hook that back up to the toobz for any Windows Updates I'd missed out, and as it turned out two Nvidia driver updates had taken place.

When I first started the test, TWICE in a row offline stopped after EXACTLY two weeks. There seemed to be something magical about two weeks. Because after that happening twice, I re-established my Steam connection, then moved the date forward three weeks in Windows and it failed again.

But then a client update occurred in their somewhere that must've done it (or it was all a coincidence) because then suddenly it went for months working flawlessly. Since those several months I've tested it about 6 times for brief periods and it still seems to be working better.

So my testing confirms your statement.

That looks more like Square's fault, but I get your point.

Are you guys saying that people BOUGHT a game at Steam, and then Steam removed that game from their library, with no refund, replacement, nothing???

Sorry for my ignorance, this is the first I'd heard of this, and if so, changes everything. I almost WISH they'd do that to one of mine.

For what I understand, they removed multiplayer component of the game once Square pulled the switch on the servers.