I'm in the same situation regarding Steam. The "What if it goes away?" question is a large one (and we'll see it in action as today's cloud services fold with t

I'm in the same situation regarding Steam. The "What if it goes away?" question is a large one (and we'll see it in action as today's cloud services fold with time), but I believe they would distribute some form of patch that allows you to play your collection offline. In any case many cracking-scene patches are targeting the Steam versions of games, and if you've already paid for the game there's no financial harm to Valve in cracking it.