Humble Bundle

The most common activation keys in a bundle are ... Steam keys.

https://www.gog.com/ Is the largest one

GOG is hardly a toy and is the platform I look to purchase tons of games on instead of Steam (which I really like) and definitely over Epic (which I've never even installed)

Right. I have to be signed in to GOG to play Cyberpunk. That violates the spirit of the original commenter

Do you? I was pretty sure the Cyberpunk launcher has a "don't use account" button.

You can play Cyberpunk downloaded from GOG without launching Galaxy.

Basically just go the the folder and run bin\x64\Cyberpunk2077.exe

The "Launch Cyberpunk" shortcut in the folder starts Galaxy and then runs the game from there.

The same is true for Steam games.

Only drm free steam games. The ones with the steam drm require steam client to be running to launch (steam itself can be in offline mode but it still needs to be running)

Games using things like steam input might also require steam to be running so there is some drm free games that might not run also. Some of those will if you move them outside the steam folder / rename Steam.exe. If you leave them in the steam folder the game will start steam for you if when you launch it.

>> Name a game distribution platform that doesn't do this.

Why? If another platform also disrespects me, does that mean Steam doesn't disrespect me?

I think that's the point. The GP post basically said, "Gamers can't be messed with." A child post gave a ton of examples of how gamers are messed with, and this comment helps cement that. It does beg the question as to why Steam isn't as evil as it could be but does choose to be as evil as they are. To me (a very casual gamer) they do seem like the least evil.

Also don't knock those zip files purchased off of itch.io. Sometimes it's good to visit a cottage industry to see what's passing under the radar of the big guys.

Gabe remembers both shareware era, and all the pains to get people to trust Steam in the first place.

Your usual publicly traded (or owned by publicly traded entity) corporation in its accidental intelligence does not