Knight Flyer, just so you know, there was a Digital Distribution company that was going out of buisness, and Steam bought them up. Guess what Steam did with all of that companies customer accounts and their games? All their accounts got transferred to Steam for free. No company that buys out another company for their accounts is going to charge those customers again for their games, that would be beyond stupid and a huge PR foobar.
Also, patches are not forced, there is an option to turn off automatic updates, has been like that since release day of Steam, same with Offline Mode when not connected to the internet.
Have you even ever used Steam?
