It is not a great trend, but you need a launcher anyway today be it Steam, Origin or any other launchers.
Only GOG offers DRM free games but it is not the norm.
Some games on steam are DRM free, meaning that you can run the game without opening Steam.
I’d rather have physical copies of my games, but it doesn’t exist anymore unless you pirate it.
With that said, Steam is the most convenient and feature complete and that is why it is so widespread. Epic games with their money printer Fortnite could not reproduce a fraction of Steam dev tools and functionality.
It is not a great trend, but you need a launcher anyway today be it Steam, Origin or any other launchers.
Only GOG offers DRM free games but it is not the norm.
Some games on steam are DRM free, meaning that you can run the game without opening Steam.
I’d rather have physical copies of my games, but it doesn’t exist anymore unless you pirate it.
With that said, Steam is the most convenient and feature complete and that is why it is so widespread. Epic games with their money printer Fortnite could not reproduce a fraction of Steam dev tools and functionality.