Combine that with the Android device, and Mountain View may very well be posed for another full house.

Right now, Valve is regarded as the perfect developer by most gamers. Every game is a good one and they love Steam. But when a game developer is bought out by another company, changes are inevitable. I don’t care how much the larger company promises that they won’t interfere, no CEO can resist tinkering with a new toy. Steam will be re-branded as Google Steam, or probably Google Games. They’ll put pressure on Valve to turn out more games and/or install some of their own execs to oversee things. At least some members of Valve will be unhappy over the changes and will quit to form their own company. Valve will start churning out lackluster games just to have something on the market. Google will cram Steam full of ads and add all sorts of new “features” to it while dumbing it down to match their other “products”.

Then the day will come when some tries to re-install Half-Life II or some other game they’ve “purchased” through Steam and they’ll be greeted with a message that says “Error! Unable to retrieve authentication information!” When they contact Google, they’ll be told that Google no longer supports those outdated games. The gamers will cry “But Valve promised us that they’d remove the DRM if anything like this ever happened!!!” Google will just laugh and say “Valve isn’t running the show any more!”

Maybe then people will learn not to trust in DRM-crippled games.