This is why the only stuff I get on steam these days are either cheapass bundles or games that are ONLY on steam. Also a lot of valve games are poop tbh.

Same here. I set a limit of roughly $5 that I don't want to exceed for Steam games. Because in the end, it can still be a good deal, as long as you take everything into consideration. If I remind myself that games are available on a best effort basis with no guarantees, and might vanish entirely at any point, and the price still seems fair, I'll go for it. In my view, the main problem is that a majority of people are not well informed about those details, and think that buying games in places like Steam is the same as adding them to a library that's theirs to keep. If it was mandatory to declare exactly what people get and don't get with a digital purchase, buying games, music, movies etc. online could look much different today, with more importance being put on the buy-to-own, DRM-free offerings.

We hear you . . . . but you are preaching for the already converted :-)

This is indeed why we can't have nice things. And while there is a part of me who'd feel smug about outages like this, if only to shut up the hardcore Steam fanboys who think It'll All Be Okay if Steam were to go offline, I also feel really bad for the people who just want to play the games they've paid for. Regardless of what platform they choose, no one deserves to have their gaming library taken away from them.
It's really difficult for me personally as some games that I've really enjoyed (like Jets N'Guns) are Steam-only, and all non-Steam/DRM-free ways of obtaining those games either dried up or were cut off by the developers altogether.

And then there's The Binding of Issac - I'd buy it in a heartbeat here if they offered Rebirth with all of the expansions. Alas, it's the only game right now that I'd actually seriously buy on Steam for myself.

Oh yes, those! With their insisting on Valve having promised to release a crack to remove all Steam reliance from games if the service ever went down.

I tried figuring out once where that very persistent rumour came from. My best bet was that it was probably a statement made by Valve in the very early days of Steam, when they still only sold their own games. Even ignoring the fact that if the reason for a Steam closure was that Valve went out of business, there would be no Valve to develop and deliver the promised crack anymore, and the fact that many games rely on much more than just Steam, the idea is mind-bogglingly naïve. Do they think all publishers on Steam agreed to Valve being allowed to just remove the DRM? Or do they believe that Valve would make an effort to renegotiate deals with all the hundreds, maybe thousands of rights holders, just to give their ex-customers a freebie? :D

AFAIK, the "source" for this claim was an alleged forum post from a Valve representative (or Gabe himself?) made long, long ago, not long after Steam opened. (And obviously this post has long since vanished, if it even ever existed.) Since then it's been repeated over and over so much, that it's now accepted as canon that Steam "officially" stated that they will issue a patch to remove any dependencies on Steam's online DRM if Valve were to go out of business.

Nevermind of course that Valve has never released any official statement to this affect, and Steam's own SSA states that they're neither liable nor responsible for what happens if you can't use the Steam service.

The best I've been able to come up with is a reddit thread from 2013 but even that proves nothing. Assuming that reply wasn't faked, it doesn't outline the details of what measures they have in place (Backup servers supported by an emergency fund managed by an independent group for a set amount of time? A miracle universal offline patch for all of their games?), nor does it outline the sustainability, terms, conditions and/or limitations of those measures going forward.

That leaves us where we started - a vague (and arguably dubious) promise from corporate, and irrational beliefs based on hearsay.

Anyway, short of something truly catastrophic, the most plausible scenario I can imagine is Valve being bought out by a big company with the resources to afford Valve's estimated market value of ~$3 billion (Microsoft? Vivendi?). After that, Steam itself would be gutted and/or EOL'd in favor of another platform branded under the Steam name, that would better suit the new owner's corporate agenda -- but again, this is just idle speculation on my part.

The only "Official" response regarding "What if Steam went down" was on a Reddit (or similar) AMA from 10 years ago. Which I've only ever seen as a screen shot and posted by some minor member of VALVe.

There is, as far as I know, now official post or policy hosted on VALVe's website.

Must say, I'd have mixed feeling about Steam going kaput at this point.

I'd never buy a game there and pretty much encourage anyone I know to buy here instead.

That being said, I think they are probably giving Linux gaming a big boost with their SteamOS.

A lot of steam games are capable to run on SSE or 3DMemu orany of the others that abounds, so if stean/valve goes byebye you can still play most of the games that you got from steam