You can take most of the game binaries out of steam as a backup, only few require steam to run in order to make DRM protection happy.
Additionally, you do not own the game on the disk, you have the license to use it privately, like you have with games bought at steam.
So the only difference is, that you are dependent on steam to keep them server running in order for you to download and reinstall a game, if you failed to back it up, prior loss.
Different are the games that require a server running in order to work, but this is not valve’s fault, but the owner of the game. I think the owner of such games should be forced to either keep the server running, or release the binary or the source in order for people to host their own server.
You can take most of the game binaries out of steam as a backup, only few require steam to run in order to make DRM protection happy.
Additionally, you do not own the game on the disk, you have the license to use it privately, like you have with games bought at steam.
So the only difference is, that you are dependent on steam to keep them server running in order for you to download and reinstall a game, if you failed to back it up, prior loss.
Different are the games that require a server running in order to work, but this is not valve’s fault, but the owner of the game. I think the owner of such games should be forced to either keep the server running, or release the binary or the source in order for people to host their own server.