You can only pick 2 games from steam to play for the rest of your life, what games are they?

Factorio. I don't even need a second pick
- The expansion, presumably
  
  Indubitably
- Yeah I mean you're not gonna have time to eat or sleep, let alone play an entire other game.
- I need a change of scenery once in a while. I've been on a slow Dwarf Fortress - Factorio - Minecraft loop for about the last 15 years. Currently playing Minecraft, specifically the Enigmatica 6 Expert modpack which I started nearly 2 years ago.
  
  I've never heard of Enigmatica before. The last expert modpack I went through was FTB Interactions, which also took me about 2 years to complete.
  How is it?

The store tab and the library tab
- I feel attacked
  
  Don't worry I have potion!
- This one
- It must be awesome hoarding all those games huh?

factorio and rimworld. I can't believe that combo isn't here yet.
- Perfect combo.
- I'd spin that slightly, and go with Satisfactory and Dwarf Fortress.
  I guess that means I like having a third dimension.

Ah, but would you keep Workshop access?
If so, Garry's Mod is almost cheating. There's a bit of everything in it.
So that and Warframe. I picked up WF ten years ago and it's still in my top ten recently played games. Though I have a love/hate relationship with the Metagame it turned into, it still remains.
- Tabletop Simulator might be cheating too
- Farmframe is pretty solid pick. Ever growing amount of content to play and collect, plus the gameplay is fun. For me it's kind of missing a reason to farm all the stuff though, but I've also stuck with it on and off about 9 years now
  
  To be honest, I stopped being a “qualified player” a few years ago. Nowadays I load up a nice long Survival round, usually against Infested to chew on, with whatever Frame I’ve forgotten how to play, to enjoy the loop without stress. So I’m not in it to farm all the stuff either. Or, I’ll play the story quest if a new one is out, since they are pretty well scaled for solo play and/or give you what you need.
  Other than that I just can’t compete. I tripped some time ago and didn’t keep up with the latest meta builds, so now I struggle to have the things “required” to effectively participate in public sessions or the latest missions. And don’t even get me started on Rivens, Shards, Liches or whatever.
  If I join a Zariman round I’ll probably die. Not as much now that I have Titania, but I’m also not clearing rooms in a single volley like everyone else.
  I’m a filthy casual and I still find a way to have fun, so there’s something there worth keeping.

RetroArch ;)
- That's an android app, why waste a steam game on that when you can get it out of steam?
  
  I get the point you’re making, but I still wanted to point out that RetroArch is multi platform, not just Android.
  
  The same could be said about any game with any non-Steam availability. I don't think that was OP's intent. That being said, emulators surely were not the intent either.
- If this counts then my first game is explorer.exe
- Wrong

Fallout 4 and Civ VI
Easy
- Are you me?
  I have 1300 hours in FO4 and almost 8600 in Civ6.

Slay The Spire for replay value and Rocket League for "pvp" itch.

So I'm going for longevity. These two definitely wouldn't be my first choices for top games.
Elder Scrolls Online and Minecraft. There is enough story, social, and creativity that I would hope it works out.
Once Baldurs Gate 3 gets solid modding, and assuming modding is allowed, that takes a spot.
- Minecraft is not on steam unfortunately and I don't know how wise it is to choose a multiplayer only game like ESO since they will eventually shut down the servers
  
  Ah forgot the steam part.
  I figure I would get bored of ESO in 15 or so years when it closes. I suspect any game will lose me at a point. For the time it's online, it would offer a lot.
  I'll sub Minecraft out for No Man's Sky. Valheim was close to taking the spot but it just doesn't ring as fun when friends aren't around. I would pace myself big time.
- Does BG3 not? I used tons of mods that seemed regularly updated.
  
  I could be wrong, I haven't modded yet, but I think official support is in the future. That's when I suspect it will really shine.

I would say noita and beatsaber.
- Yeah, if I could only play that I might eventually beat it
- I was also gonna say Noita, it's so good, especially now with some new mods

Factorio.
- Second game: Factorio, with mods enabled.

For longevity?
Satisfactory and Elden Ring.
Honestly, something like Call of Duty or fortnite might be nice too. I haven't played in years but the skill ceiling is very high so it could at least keep me occupied for a very long time.

Dwarf Fortress and Dota 2

Deep Rock Galactic and Pinball FX3. I'm tempted to put Baldurs Gate 3, but once you've done a number of runs, I feel like you'll be done with it.

The Long Dark and Valheim

Slay the Spire and Noita

Satisfactory & Mass Effect
- Mass effect legendary edition is one game with 3 games inside, so does that still count?
  
  ........I count it

Terraria and Starbound bc mods
I have a very specific taste
- Starbound is such a good game, just wish steam had cloud save for it.

Skyrim and Half-Life 2

Rimworld and M&B Bannerlords
I really wanted to fit Crusader Kings 3 in there, but I think ultimately these two cover all the bases, and have an amazing modding community to keep it fresh and interesting.

Dwarf Fortress and No Man's Sky. I wanted to say Satisfactory instead, but felt it might be too close to Dwarf Fortress in nature and that would make it hard to want to play either game if I was burned out from one of them.
- I came to say Dwarf Fortress. I could gush about it for a long time. It's a very special game. This was the only game that came to mind for this question. Especially knowing that the brothers are only about half way done with all of the features they want to add to the game. And I'm not exaggerating here. They're on version 50 and the consider version 100 to be feature complete.
  I'm so glad they found another programmer.

Does it have to be Steam? Or any two games?
- I mean you can map literally anything into Steam.

Binding of Isaac (flash) Binding of Isaac Rebirth
Literally thousands of hours of entertainment, pretty much

Dead Cells and Beat Saber. I don't know that I'll ever tire of dead cells, and beat saber my husband and I love to play together, trading off after three songs like we used with DDR when we were kids

Baldur's Gate 3, and um... Warthunder. Maybe Elite Dangerous instead of Warthunder. But why can't I play the $650 worth of other games that I bought and barely played?

Warframe is a good one. After 4000 hours I got burnt out of some of the things it does poorly and haven't played in a year, but overall it's fun with crazy new content on a regular basis for free.
Terraria has far more depth than I ever expected, and way more than that added since I last played. This game can sustain a player for ages.
I would say Satisfactory but I did actually get tired of it for a while. Itching to go back with the 1.0 release though. I love it but the two above have better longevity.

Slay the Spire would be the first slot where a lot of others could fill the second.
- Have you tried Balatro yet?

Funny how there's a solid lack of quadruple "A" games here in the comments.
- What do you mean i love paying $60 for a game and then being asked to buy a $20 dlc and new cosmetics cough cough EA, Ubisoft Microsoft cough excuse me. Indie games will always have a special place in my steam library and its in recently played tab.

Factorio and project zomboid

TF2 and TF|2

Probably age of empires and MCC.

the talos principle 1 and automobilista 2

Torchlight2 and totalAnnihilation
- Tell me you've played Spring RTS (especially Beyond All Reason)

No man’s sky and palworld

Terraria and I can't decide between Skyrim, Fallout New Vegas or BG3.

Team Fortress 2 with either Deathmatch Classic or Ricochet....

I only need one and is called "Space War" 🧐
- Hahahahhahahha

DayZ and minesweeper. DayZ has probably the best replayability over any other game I've played. On top of that it's also the game that gives me adrenaline rush like no other game has. DayZ is highly underrated and I highly recommend it in 2024 as it just keeps on giving.

Civ 6 and I'll sell my other slot to the highest bidder.

Stardew Valley (maybe not that if I can just use the Android version), Hyperbolica, Portal 2?

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Octopath Traveler 2

Some hard choices. I generally like my RTS and FPS games. I play a wide range of games from story driven like the BG series, to yearly play throughs of 93's Doom, to mil sims like arma.
I have a hard time to stick to one game for a long time, so whatever I pick would need to be moddable to bring some variety. I'm imagining maybe a stalker game where there's a wealth of mods, but the world isn't that large. Arma 3 might be nice, you got decent multi-player bots for when the world has moved on, it's very moddable and relatively easy to set up new scenarios for yourself.
I do like my sim racing as well, so asetto corsa would definitely be the main contender there.
If I'd have to pick some games off the top of my head they'd be AoE 2, HL 2, Doom 2, asetto corsa, Ms flight sim (but the servers will die at some point), Arma.
So I'm picturing myself in 40 years time, I've finished building my new rocking chair with the skills I've got from all this free time, I sit down in front of the same computer I have now. I'd say I'm launching up doom to do another play through of Sunlust. Hm or maybe I'll do a bit more work on my at that point 10 year old OpenTTD save. Just something simple that will stand the test (and already has) of time, a game I can fire up and feel just as home in now, as I did last year, and the year before that.

Nioh 2 and Satisfactory

path of exile
- ten years of updates and still going stronger than ever and it’s free - always new content every quarter

Beam.NG would be one just because it covers nearly every driving discipline and the other would probably be Cyberpunk. It’s not even that Cyberpunk is my favorite, but it has so much content in it at this point that it would keep me busy for years.

Vermintide 2 and Tekken 8.
Both games have high skill ceilings, so I could probably spend years (and have) playing both and still finding ways to improve or optimize gameplay.

Skyrim and Witcher 3. Shoutouts to Baldurs Gate and Witcher 2, but the latter is far too short for me to want it on my "you can only play this" list, it's quirky but there's something special as hell about it for me. I've played it through about 15 times.