You can easily use a crack to stop Steam being needed for any of the games that use it. So that isn't really a problem.

And I've had an MMORPG server close down while I was playing it. Earth and Beyond. It was still a good lively community but once Westwood was bought out by EA they decided they didn't want to continue E&B so just closed it down. I had been playing that for over 6 months.