STeam is a client that holds and enables one to rent games in the sense that you do not own the software and because of piracy you can only like rent the game even if buying the game in the store. The full game is probably not given on the DVDs with some of them being too large of a game (12Gb) and Steam holds the rest of the game to download, and the patches when they patch the games. A lot of producers of games now go through Steam (Valve to be exact) and if you even redo your computer and lose the games you can download them all that you have in your account from Steam. I am not using the Steam Cloud though because I prefer to have saved games on my computer and do not need Steam holding those to be cleared out of the cloud when I do not want them anymore.
Some people play games for achievements and to get them first but I just play a game for my own purposes. Plus if it is a multi-player game then there usually is a server for that with Steam to play multi-player.
Gone are the days when you bought a game with Secur-Rom or any copy protection and now you just rent the game and really do not own it, even if you bought it retail. A lot of people also do not like that and will not buy games anymore.
I re-installed (well at least try to install) some old games before all of that started happening, and some of them do work, and others I have on my XP computer so that will be that.
If I ever get any time to actually finish some games I have enough to last for quite awhile, and I do not play FPS games anyway. About the only game I played except for some sci-fi games like XCOM was Civilization in its various version forms over the years. I still have Civilization IV on my old computer and V according to some is just to far different and dumbed down to get into until the third expansion that just came out this year. Now Civilization IV did not go through Steam, you installed it like games of old, but V is done through Steam but at least they hold all the patches to games, but sometimes STeam can be wonky also according to some.
I only start up Steam when playing a game and instead of just one time, about once a week the player has to log into Steam or else the game will not play anymore, if playing single player in a game which all games have to be like verified and also the account to keep playing the game. That is why some people will not play those games anymore, and look for something else, but a lot of computer game producers are doing all the same thing, and Steam is better usually then others. Sim City new one the player has to be on-line to even play, and that seems to be fine with some players, and others like me will never buy the game ever.
If software goes that way, then it is only old software that I will use. Even keeping a backup of the game or software on the cloud may be fine, but to store my stuff on a cloud is nothing I am going to do.
Microsoft again, and others doing this stuff, and it is bad enough to think that now even today they think they own your computer, and other people are going to linux and that will be that. Enough is enough I guess.
But like I said I have old games still playable if worked through and some not, and DosBox for old XCOM games that still work on my XP computer and will work in Windows 7.
A lot of people never ripped off games maybe only some young people and others in foreign Countries that steal stuff (China wherever).