[sherincall]

I don't think it is fair to pin this on steam. Plenty of games on steam run without steam, and require no installation - just copy them over to a different PC. They often come with binaries for all supported OSes at once, so your windows install will work on linux too.

It is the game publishers that choose to use steam drm. Often the same publishers publish on GOG without the drm (since gog, admirably, does not offer a drm option to them), but it is not steam that is forcing the drm on you. Your issue is with the game publisher.

[Moru]

No, it's in the agreement when you sign up for Steam. You don't own, you license.

[ClumsyPilot]

Well the only owner is the copyright holder