I doubt steam will be the first company with verifiably active software out there that it still being used past the reasonable lifetime of the licencee.

My prediction is that someone will see a business opportunity in buying up licence enforcement rights and doing what patent trolls do today... threaten to bring hell down on everyone whose licence is over, say, 30 years old unless they pay a relatively small (possibly recurring) amount to relicence. Even genuine licencees would need to produce proof under pressure.

My suggestion to someone enterprising who has too much moral fibre for the above is to somehow patent this as a business method, wait for the practice to become slightly established, then bring righteous justice down in a fiery rain of lawyers.

The old days of buying games in boxes on Floppies, CDs and Cartridges made this so much easier.

DVDs too. Maybe say discs.

Moving this video to ant's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.