If you're like most gamers, you've probably taken a minute to wonder just what your rights are when buying games digitally from a program such as Valve's popular Steam system. However like millions of others you probably moved right on along and kept using it, while slowly forgetting that traditional retailers such as GameStop exist. Now with EA getting back in the digital delivery game with their Origin software it seems more and more like this will be the way of the future.

The concern here though is what happens when you get banned? If Valve Anti-Cheat finally gets tired of booting you off Counterstrike Source servers for wall-hacking, or even if you just get hacked, do you loose access to every game you've ever bought through Steam? We'll take a look at Valve's quiet update on this policy after the cut.

For those of you who click through the update messages without even really paying attention, Steam did have an update recently. Part of that update was a new policy modification that makes it clear accounts are no longer being disabled. Instead accounts will be locked, which prevents them from having games added, or items traded, but still allows players to make use of the games. Hopefully this will increase the player's protection, and prevent anyone from loosing access to legitimately purchased games on Steam.