Yeah, it's already bad enough you can no longer play games through Steam that were made for the respective OS, e.g. Windows XP, and soon Windows 7... like, I bought games on steam nearly 20 years ago, and the games I bought at that time were designed to run on the systems of that time (and many haven't been updated since). I expect to still be able to play those games on my old computers... but I literally can't (unless I pirate them), because Valve decided old computers just don't matter and you might as well throw those in the trash, I guess? Cool.
Take your favorite game today. In ~20 years, you'll be lucky if you can even play it at all.
I guess luckily the backup insurance we have is Linux... but that's also a matter of how far back of a Linux install you could log into Steam with. I guess we'll see. :)
What OS would I be running in the VM? I still can't run Steam on the old OS, and thus can't install/run the respective game I'd want to play :( Actually, now that I think about it, I bet a pretty noteworthy % of my Steam library is literally not playable on any OS supported officially by Steam...
I'm pretty sure you have a few options - you can download an old version of Steam and just not update, you can download the games for offline use and then copy them to the VM, you can just download a crack for that game since any game old enough to not be usable on a new OS wouldn't have DRM, or you can pirate them (as you said). :)
Take your favorite game today. In ~20 years, you'll be lucky if you can even play it at all.
I guess luckily the backup insurance we have is Linux... but that's also a matter of how far back of a Linux install you could log into Steam with. I guess we'll see. :)