It turns out that in a surprising number of cases, you don’t have to. Control, Journey, and Beyond Two Souls (as of this writing, it launched with Denuvo) are all completely DRM Free and will run without EGS. You can download them via the open-source “Legendary” unofficial client, or even in a Virtual Machine if you feel so inclined.
There are a tiny handful DRM-free Steam games but in my experience, it seems to be way more common on the Epic Game Store, particularly for AAA titles. I’m not sure if this was intentional of a happy accident, but it’s caused me to choose EGS for several titles recently. Mind, you still need to check before buying!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/870780/Control_Ultimate_E...
If you buy Horizon: Zero Dawn from Steam, you won’t be able to actually start the game unless Steam is installed. However, if you buy the game from EGS, it work fine even if EGS is not installed. The EGS version is a completely standalone copy of the game that does not require any clients in order to run.
This are a handful of Steam games like this as well. One example I purchased recently is Ori and the Will of the Wisps, which I downloaded in a VM before moving over to my main (Steamless) Windows install. It works fine. For whatever reason, however, this seems to work far more often with EGS games, and I really appreciate that!
Edit: Useful reference https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16BjnaBO40vkt6kFVl0QW...
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Edit2: By the way, I mentioned in my parent post that Journey was DRM Free on EGS. I have just learned that as of a recent update, saving is broken without EGS (although the game still launches, and you may not need saving given its two-hour runtime).
I'm willing to chalk this up to a bug rather than anything malicious—and of course, the good thing about DRM-Free software is that if you've backed up your old copy, it will keep working, and no one can take it away from you. But, this type of thing is definitely a reason to still prefer GoG and itch.io where possible.
The nature of DRM-Free media is that once I've downloaded it, no one can take it away from me. I may miss out on future updates, but I always make purchasing decisions based on what's available today, and not what may be available in the future. (And I don't play online multiplayer.)
The EGS version of Tetris Effect was DRM Free at launch, but DRM was added in an update. This means I can't recommend Tetris Effect to anyone who cares about clients or DRM—but on a personal level I don't particularly care, because I already got my copy!
Separately, if e.g. GoG was the only PC game vendor, they probably would never have made DRM-Free games a core focus of their business, because why bother when you're the only game in town? And so, I'll always welcome new entrants into the market.
This statement sounds like the "no sugar added" label that you see slapped on high sugar beverages. Yes, there's no added sugar (or DRM), but there's still sugar. It's completely different to no sugar (or no DRM), as is the case with egs (as in, you can launch the executable without egs running), according to https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Control
What issues?
Anyway, having to install a new launcher, as annoying as it is, is a far cry from throwing out your entire phone and all your apps, and buying a different phone (which has many of the same restrictions again).
I don't understand why people keep comparing the iOS App Store to the Epic Game Store exclusives, they not remotely the same.
They has some issues where people could use any email to register an account without verification, leaving thousands (millions?) without a way to register their own valid emails.
They were caught scanning your pc for everything to 'provide a better experience' if you had some things installed.
And if (want to think) they are 'fighting' for openness, 'buying' rights to games and taking them out of other stores.
All of them can be easily googled so not going to spend time providing sources
The closest thing I could find for the registering without verification claim was a Verge article [1] about people's Fortnite account being taken over after clicking a link that was sent to them. If you have a better source please do share.
EDIT: Source has been found, apparently store didn't initially send a verification email so anyone could use any email[4], this has been fixed though. I could find no source for the claim that this affected millions or thousands of people.
As for the claim that they were "scanning your pc for everything", that is just completely wrong. According a few articles [2][3] they were reading your steam friends list after getting permission from the user.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/16/18185398/fortnite-player-... [2]: https://www.slashgear.com/epic-games-store-isnt-spying-but-d... [3]: https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-steam-data-reddit/ [4]: https://twinfinite.net/2020/09/crysis-remastered-ray-tracing...
And the following miriad of people showing that Epic is getting much more info than it says they do, even before asking permission (including even steam's games play time)
(it was the top post for me searching 'epic games store scan entire pc' btw)
Regarding the email thing, I said thousands (maybe millions) as I have no clue of the number, but remember easily over 300 comments in a'me too' kind of way on reddit when this happened.
Edit: even Tim admitted they fucked up after being found: https://www.reddit.com/r/PhoenixPoint/comments/b0rxdq/epic_g...
> The current implementation is a remnant left over from our rush to implement social features in the early days of Fortnite. It's actually my fault for pushing the launcher team to support it super quickly and then identifying that we had to change it. Since this issue came to the forefront we're going to fix it.
The publisher sells their fan base to Epic, and Epic gets a list of potential people they can sell their own crap to, and gets a big install base number they can leverage to convince more publishers to sell them more fan bases.
#1 the publisher wins because they don't like risk in the first place, and free money is free money
#2 epic wins because they build legitimacy and reach, and they sell more fortnite MTX to their burgeoning install base
#3 the developer loses because their brand is tarnished and their potential for future titles is damaged due to lower sales numbers and shredding their fan base
#4 the players lose because they lose choice and have their library locked in a 2nd rate predatory ecosystem
EGS represents the choice in the market, and the market can act on that. Developers have the choice to go on the store, and they have the choice to take exclusivity agreements, or they can choose to go on steam or to offer direct downloads. Customers and chose whether they want to purchase a game from EGS, or go elsewhere.
"a product exists that I don't like" is not "bad competition". If you don't like Epic Game Store, then continue to not use it and go to a competing service/game.
I've played thousands of hours of Rocket League, but still out of principle had Psyonix refund me after the switch to Epic. Similarly, I had to ask for a refund for my kickstarter backing of Diabotical, a game I do wish to try one day. I understand why James took the money... but it's upsetting that the cost was exclusivity.