[STEAM] EA Play %80 Off

You don't own them either tho. Whatever terminology you want to use, you are only buying a license to stream the game. You can't sell it, can't give it to your friends, and it can be revoked at any time without getting your money back for it for whatever reason. I'd say it's closer to a rent than a buy.

A source for you as well:
https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-game-ownership-in-the-digital-age-what-do-you-do-in-a-post-ownership-age

"According to the agreement that you agree to every single time you buy a game on Steam, "the Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services." You're not buying the games, you're buying the license to use them. "

and of course from the actual Steam Subscribed Agreement:
https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement

(2). LICENSES ⏶

A. General Content and Services License

Steam and your Subscription(s) require the download and installation of Content and Services onto your computer. Valve hereby grants, and you accept, a non-exclusive license and right, to use the Content and Services for your personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms). This license ends upon termination of (a) this Agreement or (b) a Subscription that includes the license. The Content and Services are licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services. To make use of the Content and Services, you must have a Steam Account and you may be required to be running the Steam client and maintaining a connection to the Internet.

But yes, Valve has claimed in case they go down they will try and make the games drm free, and give the users some window of time to download their library before they completely shut down. Again unlikely it will ever happen, but yes, the games are licensed, hence why you get keys, and you never own the product, just a key to use the product as funny as that sounds.

There's some benefits to this, and of course the negatives that could come with it. Like with UPLAY right now who's shutting down many of the servers of their older games, shutting down not only multiplayer but also dlc access to some people because the servers can't verify you ever had it. Thankfully there's a work around for the dlc problem, for multiplayer only for some.