This is what scares me about Steam at little. My understanding (though not sure) is this is what Apple's OSX store and Microsoft's windows app store are trying

This is what scares me about Steam at little. My understanding (though not sure) is this is what Apple's OSX store and Microsoft's windows app store are trying to solve. Basically sandbox native apps so you can install them and not worry they can do stuff like this. I'm not saying they succeed at that. I have no idea how secure their sandboxes are and what limits they place. But, that is arguably the intent (or at least one of the intents). Steam on the other hand has no such intent AFAIK. Of course in all those cases, including Steam, there is the threat to the publisher they'll be banned from the store if they do this kind of thing. I don't know if there is any example of Steam removing an app because of "unethical behavior". I would guess if it was an indie they'd ban first, question later whereas if it was a big publisher like EA they'd probably talk first, try to get them to address the issue. I'd be curious to know if Steam Box makes any effort in this direction. I was similarly worried about Boxee apps (the PC/OSX/Linux version), XBMC scripts. etc...