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>what if Steam went belly-up? Would I lose everything I paid for?

In many cases it's possible to copy the game out of the Steam folders and have it still work. It depends on how much Steam/DRM functionality it uses and on packaging issues. At least for Linux-native games, I have found the games almost always work outside Steam (once any dynamic library issues are cleared up).



If you are quick enough and it's not deleting the whole folder because a game gets somehow retracted. Happened to me once.


Steam's backup functionality could be used to handle this in advance. I don't think Steam could reach into a user's backups?




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