"It's not paranoia if they're really after you." In this case there is ample precendence of companies in better position that Valve currently is, going belly up for a variety of reasons. And I have personal experiance with losing music due to msn and yahoo music going out of buisness. At the time I expected those two companies to be rock solid. Didn't forsee any chance that ownership issues over the music we bought would ever be an issue. But it is. So I am once bitten twice shy on this. I was excited about the brand new way to buy media. I embraced the change. I purposefully supported this new distribution method by buying exclusively online instead of buying my music at used CD stores as I had done for many years. I spent more to get my music becasue I wanted to vote for this new distribution with my wallet. msn and yahoo flarbed me.
Other points of concern is this battle between comcast and the FCC over net neutrality. comcast has won the latest round so it is free to slow and even block traffic to targeted sites and users. They can charge video sites like YouTube a premium so as not to slow down traffic. Gaming sites, particularly a large gaming network like Steam would very much be on their radar. comcast already throttles P2P usage. There is no solid reason to say that they won't also throttle video and gaming usage. And don't tell me comcast wouldn't due this due to fear of customer backlash. I am a comcast user and they don't give a hoot about us. Dealing with their customer service is a pointless and painful waste of time. They are our only broadband option. They will do what suits them. If they don't fix their overextension problem and unclog their congested pipes, they are likely enough to throttle particularly high bandwidth using sites and services. They've done it already. And they recently paid many millions to win a court case in order to retain their ability to do so.
The bigger Steam gets, and it will suddenly get bigger by millions if the whole of the Civ community must join, the bigger target it becomes. A fatter, juicier, and more fruitful target to hackers as well. 25 million users who can make digital transactions and have their PCs open to the service... yep major hacker bait. And I hope that Steam has the needed infrastrucure to support the few million new users which they may suddenly get from the Civ community. Already I read talk of slow periods. I hope for all your sakes that they haven't overextend themselves like comcast has. What happens when they do reach a point when their servers are overtaxed? Wouldn't they begin dropping services? Being big brings its own sort of challenges. Their current success doesn't neccesarily give me any confidence. But their rapid growth as relates to overextending themselves, is a legit cause for concern. Even so, I do have trust in Valves need to preserve their rep. And I do see their market growing. I thought that about msn and yahoo music though. Stuff happens. Nothing new here.
