The person basically posted a thread or something talking about selling their account, which is a TOS violation. They have now been locked out of their account and all $1800 worth of games. Shazam. I don't necessarily agree with the user, but at the same time, I don't agree with Steam. Are you buying games with Steam, or just renting them? And what's to keep Steam from arbitrarily locking you out of your games, forever, with no recourse? I guess you could sue them, but that's expensive and not guaranteed to go anywhere.

I want DRM-free games.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... -games.ars

What the issue with selling your steam account anyway? Personal security? Don't see what the big fuss is about. Then again, i'm too tired to think in-depth right now

Yea, well, that's a good question as well. Or how about, "Why can't I transfer my games I'm done playing to another use?"

Simply because Steam will miss out pretty hard on revenue. Without getting into whether they're making enough money as it is, or whether they could implement a system whereby they profit, remember Steam is a business like any other and they're only interested in revenue. I accept that. To change that means moving away from capitalism.

I think Steam may not want account-selling because that will somewhat dirty the image of their service. I just foresee a shitload of issues coming up with kids that get scammed, which admittedly doesn't seem like anyone's problem, but i'm sure Steam don't want to handle the spike in customer support costs for something they see no return from.

What i'm more curious about is... what if Steam goes bust? Losing all my games isn't the end of the world but i'd like to be assured that i'd still be able to access what i paid for, especially if some fat-cat decided to pull the plug and live the rest of his life in the Caribbean.

Its probably what steam is afraid the most, when people start compiling accounts so that they purchase games on sale and then sell the account for profit, where the account price is somewhere between the current cost of the games and the price the games where bought at. Say three $20 games are half off costing $30, i buy them and once the sale is over i sell the account for $45.

I'm sure it was negative publicity that got the account re-enabled. Yay for the power of the people, boo for wish-washy corporate policy. I would like to see a way to 'cash out' of steam. They give you non-Steam versions of your games on your PC... no DRM, no way to re-download, no steam-added benefits like friends list and automatic updates and whatnot, but you get your games. If Steam ever goes belly-up, that's what you get, or if you decide you hate Steam, you can still get it. I think it's a fair trade-off, but I'm not sure that Steam wants you to be able to get off their teat that easily. It's a closed ecosystem, just like Apple, and they like it that way. Never mind that they've been very good to their users so far, it's probably only a matter of time before they go evil. A cash-out option would be very, very nice.