The issue at hand is that Steam removed something from the users library. Usually people consider anything on his computer to be his property, no matter at what cost it was purchased. While I don't know whether that was as claimed the first instance of content removal or whether under the terms of service any content is only leased it is certainly a wake up call. It is especially concerning if you bought your games for a very similar price as at a store.

So, in short, the issue is that Steam apparently has the right to remove content from their clients' libraries.

If you were Valve, what would you do? Without the servers, the game is completely useless, and they probably recognized that fact. Being that this is the first time in 9+ years that they have done this, and only in this particular circumstance where--beyond their control--a game is rendered disabled, I believe there is not much reason to fear them removing your games at random.

I'm confused, does the change remove the game's listing from Steam when not installed, remove only the listing if it is installed, or silently uninstall it if it is installed?

The first is reasonable, the second is iffy and would more likely be a technical limitation than a explicit choice on Valve's part, the third scenario is the problematic one.

I don't know this game, but if for example Blizzard would shut down the World of Warcraft servers you could still play it on private servers. Same for a lot of other MMOs that do not have their official server anymore like Star Wars Galaxies and Earth & Beyond. People can still play these on private and / or emulated servers.

Don't you need some kind of a cracked version of the game for that? I don't know if you can play on private servers with a Steam version of a game anyway.

It probably depends on the game and how they store server information. For instance, if they hostname for the server that broadcasts available game servers is sitting in a .ini file, you don't need a crack. If it was a hardcoded string in the binary, then you would. Of course some games may also employ other mechanisms to restrict what/where you can connect to, but in a lot of cases I've seen it is a matter of pointing to an IP with a server running.

As an example, Counter Strike: Source stored the servers in a human readable file and you could add alternative servers in the config file without a problem.

And where do you get the software that runs on the servers?

Most server software is emulated but I suspect there might be instances of leaked server software.

In 2007, at least, you could play WoW on a private server merely by changing your config file to point at that server; no crack was necessary. It probably was not worth Blizzard's time to shut down this configurability.

private servers on WoW are illegal, and you might have to downgrade to be able to join one.

Illegal? What law is being broken?

Blizzard actively shuts down people that reverse engineer their servers[0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

His point is that it's a EULA violation, not a criminal one.

It is a non issue for Steam, as such they have no ground to remove the game from users library.

I just checked and steam lets me re-install it if I want to.

Maybe they were requested to remove it by Square Enix?

It doesn't matter, because Square Enix doesn't own the games that were in players' libraries.

I think the important point missing from that is that Challenges was a free multiplayer add-on given to the owners of the base game. That really changes the nature of them removing the game from user libraries from they removed software that users paid for to they removed a free program that's useless now.

Those circumstances does make the removal less controversial. However the better course of action for Square Enix would be to release the server software and let people host their own servers. Why destroy the whole community and prevent people from playing your game?

To sell the new game, of course.

Nothing ruins future sales like lack of demand due to past sales.

Killing of a living active game is surely bad PR, no? Badwill ruins future sales too.

You're still missing the point that Steam is "reaching into people's systems" and removing programs.

That said, it's done all the time via apt-get or windows update or other program updates. People think that this rises to a new level though, and given the fact that Steam users are younger, tech-saavy, and more vocal it's no wonder that it's raising a stink.

Is it? In Steam, one's "Library" is the list of games you have access to, including games that aren't installed on the system. Has anyone had the game silently uninstalled if they already had it on their system? If the listing is removed even if the game is installed, can the game be launched by running the executable directly?