Lets leave the ownership discussion for another day/thread. It can get complicated and sometimes heated .

~$10 or less for a game that, in effect, has about the same amount of risk associated with losing access to it (actually, less, really), or $30 (I won't put full price, to be fair) for a game just so you can have the disc?

You're far more likely to lose the disc before Steam goes out of business. And even then, all you own is the disc, you still have exactly the same level of ownership of the actual software.

I'd like to add to that point by saying Steam has been quickly gaining attention of all game developers because it inhibits the ability to pirate games. Games will always be sold in stores, but I predict a time when all games will require activation through an interface such as Steam.

That's why I often shop via Amazon.com, for my games I get the disc & can usually install & play in just a few minutes (very handy on my slow connection)

I'd like to add the point that Steam does jack diddly for hindering video game piracy (actually, it makes it simpler). Steam does, however, eliminate the second-hand market.

You can buy games suprisingly cheap if you have a little patience.
Rage on the xbox for exmple is ￡12.98 on amazon, that includes the cost of shipping.
Prices can drop low, brutal legned is ￡3.99 with shipping. I could actually sell that and make a very small profit.

Yes but the thing is, youdont have the same ownership as me. Say if valve didnt want you to play those games, then you wont. Me on the other hand, unless they send Gabe with a baseball bat to smash my disks, they cant stop me.
You pay for a game, and play it when you want AND when valve lets you. I pay for it, and play it when I want. No middle man.

Its hard to loose a disk if you keep it in the case, and put the case back with the rest.

Steam as a market place is fine as a DRM it's one step behind Ubisoft. Personally I can't stand either of them and would like both to go out of business.

Gog.com all the way when it comes to digital distribution. Otherwise I'll stick with hard coppies.

Sympathy for the OP, but it may be worth looking at ways of when buying your games not having to tie them to something like Steam in the future.

Warning to the OP: This thread is being hijacked by Steam haters.

errr... how is that even possible, did you check your bank statements to verify you were charged for the game?


it might be faster to get their customer service on the phone instead of emails

It does not prevent pirate games from being made. I'm no expert on how it's done but I do know there are pirate copies of Skyrim for example and that is a game that requires steam, proving that Steam for this purpose is not very useful

This is a problem I have found myself. I couldn't even find NV on PC in my local game store, they only seem to cater for the console market..... so instead I buy a physical version of Amazon. It still requires DRM but I like the physical touch of the CD and the smell of a nre instruction book

As for where you used to work, please tell me where that is so I can avoid it like the plague........ and possibly inform the police

I should point out that Steam discussion should be in http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331715-unofficial-steamdrm-discussion-26/page__hl__unofficial%20steam thread as well

We have a dedicated Steam/DRM discussion thread http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1331715-unofficial-steamdrm-discussion-26. This thread is about recovering his Yahoo account, which has little to do with Steam itself.

I've actually had the same thing happen to me recently. Well I wasn't locked out of Steam, but I coudn't get access to my e-mail account that was connected to Steam.

I just went through their whole support thing (using my current e-mail, that is a must, you have to have access to the email you give them in the support ticket), and everything got cleared up in a matter of days.

You've still never stated why you can't get to your email account. Online email providers virtually never delete their accounts, no matter how long the user has been inactive. You should try contacting Yahoo! to recover that account.

Besides, there are other ways of contact than email. If you call Steam, they'll have to respond in person...at which point you have infinite opportunity to recover your account.

Oh, and a quick hint for when you're selecting automated options on a support line...say "representative" to get through to a live person. If the automated voice insists that you choose an option before putting you through to a representative, just say "representative" again and you'll go right through to a real person. It's the fastest and easiest way to bypass the crappy automated support.

At that point it's basically a matter of pick your poisen.

Eh, not really. I don't understand what issue the OP could possibly be having with Yahoo!, and he never elaborated. It could just be that he forgot his password, but they would never delete an account. It would be the easiest thing in the world to do a password recovery or contact them and recover the account.

Actually yahoo had a policy of if you didnt use, your e-mail address within a certain period they would delete it, hotmail also has the same policy my sister lost her account because she lost access to any internet connection and couldnt read here e-mails within the set time and and when she finally got access here account had been deleted with a message explaing the policy.

How long is this certain period? I just checked and I still have my Yahoo account from years ago that I never sign into.

You could say the same about Steam. You can just contact them and they'll change your email. It worked for me, but the OP will have to elaborate if we're to know weather it's Steams fault or not.

He says that he's been trying to email them and has just been getting automated responses. Short of not having any phone service (and really, what's the likelihood of that?), there's no reason he couldn't just call them up and talk to a real person...and it would probably take 5 minutes.

Actually I've just read his second post (must've missed it) where he said that they asked him for one of his game codes to verify that it was his account. If he doesn't have any physical copies of games that were activated through Steam than I don't know what he could possibly do. Hopefully yahoo! will prove to have better customer service, though I don't know how likely that is.

Yeah, but I doubt that's the only way to recover an account. There's a reason why these services always ask you for a secret question .

actually, the first version of skyrim didn't require steam, the game executable forgot to check for steam when started without the launcher

Without knowing your password for your e-mail and for steam itself, coupled with having formatted your hard drive... That's going to be a tough one.

If you have a retail disc with the cd key then a photo would make it possible to prove that you own that account, other than that I can only suggest trying all sorts of passwords you used in the past on your yahoo account (don't know if they have protection against trying to log in repeatedly with false passwords, iirc steam has a sort of time-out when you fail your login a certain amount of times in a certain period of time).

I kind of had the same sort of problem years ago, where I forgot both my steam password and my secret answer. At that time steam still stored the password locally so I could use a utility to extract the password from my steam directory. It won't help you though since it isn't stored locally anymore (afaik) and that formatted hard drive would make that a very long shot anyway.

Just keep on talking with support, they often don't adress the problem and give some generic copy-paste answer, but just keep feeding them information and remain polite and at some point, if possible, they'll find a solution.
I had to deal with them during last winter sale when money was transfered from my account but the transaction failed, supports first response was: "try buying the games again" totally ignoring that I already paid, in the end I had to provide them a screenshot of my bank transaction before he finally understood what had gone wrong and enabled the games on my account.

Anyhow, either photo's of retail disks or trial and error your yahoo password (and manage your passwords next time, take a look at the data privacy tread on this forum, this is a harsh situation you're in, make sure it won't happen to you again in the future)

You should probably elabortae on this because the basic function of Steam lets you download the game as many times as you want. I'm going to assume that you did something wrong and that it was most likely your fault.