[inexcf]

>But I have never, and probably will never, buy game from anywhere that requires me to install a launcher and look at advertising before I get to play.

You'll be happy to hear that Steam does not require you to do any of that. If the game does not heavily rely on Steam services you don't have to have Steam started at all. I just tested some games and i could just start them from the executable without Steam running. I also disabled the news window you can get on startup and the Steam client starts on the library, not the store page.

So have fun.

[PufPufPuf]

Some games on Steam are truly "DRM-free", but the default way is to use the Steamworks DLL which tries to open the game through Steam if the exe was clicked directly. This "DRM" is trivial to remove with the right tools (if not accompanied by a real DRM), but still you'd be basically cracking the games you bought.

GOG (and also Itch and sometimes Humble) simply gives you an installer with no DRM at all, meaning that the games will continue to work even if GOG blows up.

So yeah, that's why some people prefer buying on GOG over Steam. That, and European patriotism, sometimes.

Creators are sometimes afraid of this model, sadly, due to the perceived increased potential of piracy. Even though CD PROJEKT RED have repeatedly demonstrated that they can sell their own games with zero DRM and still dominate the top selling charts.

[stavros]

But there's no way to download your games without Steam, right?

[gothroach]

The only ways I'm aware of to download your Steam games are through the Steam desktop client or using the SteamCMD command-line client.

Edit: I think people really sleep on SteamCMD, I really like using it.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SteamCMD