I'm pro-Steam and I don't care that they revise the EULA at whim. Steam, like the AppStore, has many features over DRM free boxed software.
1. My sh!t is in the cloud. Hard drive fail? No biggie. Just re-download.
2. Scratched CDs are no longer a worry. Plus I don't have to bend over and put a CD in the loading tray to play a dumb game.
3. Free games. I've never walked into Best Buy and been handed an armful of free games.
4. It works on install.
5. It works on install. I list this twice. Doesn't anyone remember the hours of driver installation it took to play a game of Duke Nukem at your buddies 90s LAN party? GD, that was a waste. I'd have killed for Steam and fast Internet back then.
6. The three F's of the rich man. If it flies, floats or fornicates, it's cheaper to rent in the long term. I'd add a fourth: Functions. Software is outdated the moment it is released. I'm renting a "game experience". I care nothing about the code and functions that make it work nor do I wish to own something I won't use in six months. I pay the nerds at Valve to keep my game experience happening just like I pay the nerds at Apple to keep the music pumping into my skull.
But, but, but, Jatta, you have no control if you don't own it. Really? I have a box of VHS tapes in my garage. I own them and control them without limits. Yet I have no means of ever again using them again on my HD 3D 72" TV.
Owning games is so 20th Century. People need to join this millennium and let go. Has the OP tried to get a refund from Steam? They probably don't owe one legally but it would be a good business practice and something worth trying if you hate the EULA.
If you are going to own a game, buy a good board game. Those at least can appreciate in value due to the vibrant collector market.
1. Everything else you have to reinstall and set up again, things that are lost forever, are a much bigger deal than re-installing a game. Heck, it's slower because downloading is a heck of a lot worse than just reading a disc.
2. I'd rather put in a CD (or DVD) than wait for a game to download. Installation is much easier and smoother with a disc, and games made within the last 10 years don't require it to run, just to install. If you take care of your things, scratches aren't a problem anyway, and you could always have backup copies, which is kept as part of a backup of your HD really makes 1 a pointless argument as well.
3. I've never been given a decent free game period. I've been given trials, and I have been given bad games that I wouldn't play for more than 3 minutes for free, but I'd be interested to hear about the good free games you get from Steam.
4. More true in general for games you get on CD/DVD. Those games generally have optional patches that you can play without unless you want to play online. If you want to play a game you download, you'll probably get all that stuff anyway, just adding to the installation time.
5. No, I don't remember that. I remember the pain of getting on battle.net after re-installing SC, but, again, had it been without a disc all of that would have been downloaded when I installed anyway.
6. You never, at any point, owned any game you bought. You ALWAYS bought the license, just that it came with physical media as well. Why would you be ok with further limits that you never had to deal with before? They seem to have tricked you into thinking you actually owned Super Mario Bros. but I can assure you that if you ask Nintendo for the profits from the game you "bought" they would laugh. You're not doing anything at all different now.
I would say if you never use a game again after a few months, it was a poor purchase, but to each his own. I sat down recently and played The Legend of Zelda on my NES. You better believe I will play a game of CiV in 20 years if I want to, even if i have to go to court to do so. It is my right as a buyer (just as I "bought" the Zelda game).
I'm not so sure it's cheaper as you claim anyway. I bought CiV new when it came out, boxed, for $35. Was that the price on Steam?
You do not own those VHS tapes without limits, I would imagine, and just because you choose not to use them doesn't mean it's impossible. I had a VCR hooked up to an HD TV just a few years ago, and all of my VHS tapes got put on DVD. Having that option is pretty nice, I'd say.
Again, you never OWNED a game. You ALWAYS bought the right to use it. The only thing that is different now is that the company wants to reserve the"right" to restrict your rights. Fortunately for us all, you can't sign away your rights (otherwise people would be tricked into signing themselves into slavery all the time, or banks would get people to sign something saying they could charge interest over the legal limit).
That being said, it's unfortunate that companies want to try to restrict our rights, sometimes by skitting around the law, other times in spit of it with a contract that cannot be held against someone in court, and sometimes though scary legal words and trickery that would lead someone to believe things are really all that different now.
Copyright has been around since the 18th century. It's not omething as new as you seem to think.