Yes, I was going to mention Steam, but decided not to. Frankly I don't put a whole lot of stock in the assurances of an "escape hatch," I'm not really sure that

Yes, I was going to mention Steam, but decided not to. Frankly I don't put a whole lot of stock in the assurances of an "escape hatch," I'm not really sure that such a thing is possible to reliably promise. The better "guarantee" on that end is the knowledge that Steam makes Valve lots and lots of money so they'll probably want to keep it running. The fact that you do have some sort of local copy and cracking would be an option if it came to it is some comfort also, though that's not really a solution that scales to the size of peoples' massive Steam libraries. There's also of course DRM-free stores like GOG as an alternative.