The one hour video [Warning Legal Terms are used throughout the video] :
From the article relating to why give a license to digital games:
Why a License to Digital Games?
This is pure speculation on my part. A license can be revoked. Why would a license be a good choice for video games? To give the publisher or platform the ability to ban a user if they meet the criteria for banning. I was letting stunned when I read buying a digital video game only gives a license to it. It didn't make sense to me but since I've time to think about it I realized the license makes sense.
ye, pretty sure the steam is just the one time license to use the software with no gurantees to it working, them updating it, or providing you access to it etc.
which from a practicality standpoint does have some merit in the real world in that.. if a tornado hits the sub station where that particular regions steam server gets power or some other 'act of god', would protect steam from outages where you couldnt get access to the game, or if the game legitimately does not work with the newer version of windows or something like that, which would be outside their control as they are not the creator of said software.
BUT from the language i had seen in reading steams agreement, seemed more they are protected if they decide at a later date to no longer service a game, or even if a company pissed them off they could press a button and make everyones copy worthless. it wasnt worded as a 'act of god' clause, so to speak, it was you just straight up agree that you may not have access to the game