Any way to get rid of Steam, post-purchase?

[Sill]

This is great info. I always though you were tethered to Steam. However the advantage of Steam, with games that you downloaded, Steam makes it easy to manage these games as time goes by, they are always there for a reinstall, and Steam is free to utilize.

I’ve never found Steam to be onerous, but a convenience. If you are worried about privacy, establish an alt email, and create an account. Make no friends or make your home page private. The ability to re-download games, verify games, and stay in touch with a large group of fellow gamers is win win, at least for myself, and this is not an attempt on my part to tell you how to acquire games .

Mike and OrionCrisp were the ones who turned this into a privacy thing. Mike knows me from other threads so I guess thats what he assumed this was about, but it's not. Let me clarify this...

While my biggest concern in anything I do online is privacy - and it should be that way for everyone - my first concern was that I wanted to outright own the game, not have to check in with a digital overseer to use it, ever. I wish I could still buy games on physical media, but thats not an option anymore, unfortunately. Even so I would still like to have an uncontested license to a game and not have to sign into an account to use it. Download, enter the key, done.

Now with that established, yes I am concerned about the privacy re: buying and running anything on/from Steam. And as I said earlier, thats a whole separate discussion.

I agree with Huntn. Steam is no big deal. I don't feel they are in any way infringing my privacy or even mining my info unlike SO MANY others.

The only down side to running steam is storage I suppose... Anyhow it's worth it IMO and spending a lot of time and effort to avoid it seems insane.

Since you brought it up, yes they're mining. The info they're getting from your gameplay is quite a bit more than you probably can imagine, and its one of the reasons they can put $80-100 worth of games+DLC up for sale for $9 or whatever.

I didn't intend to spend ANY time on this. I started the thread to see if I could do what I wanted to do, which was install the game and run it without Steam overseeing it and hopefully deleted from my computer. I didn't post it to talk about privacy issues.

Ditto, and in many ways it makes like so much easier. Cloud game saves, one spot to download and install your games

Why are cloud game saves good? Whats wrong with local storage?

Even though I’m not really active online like I used to be, I like that when I log into Steam, and can see a list of online friends and what they are currently playing.

Out of all of my friends, I can count on one finger how many still play online games. I'd prefer to be able to play against the computer anyway. I can pause that when I want, pick it up again when I want, which is something that doesn't work well for team play.

 

[Mackilroy]

Cloud saves don’t preclude local storage, but if you happen to lose your progress, or play on a different computer, it’s a nice benefit.

As for online, I play a mix of single- and multiplayer games. While your friend group may largely prefer single player, there’s many people on the flip side of that coin.

 

[maflynn]

Why are cloud game saves good? Whats wrong with local storage?

Cloud based saves are better, in that if you needed to restore your computer, i.e., if something happened to your drive, or bought a new computer, or use a gaming laptop. Your progress is not lost

 

[Huntn]

Cloud saves don’t preclude local storage, but if you happen to lose your progress, or play on a different computer, it’s a nice benefit.

As for online, I play a mix of single- and multiplayer games. While your friend group may largely prefer single player, there’s many people on the flip side of that coin.

Cloud storage just saved me the other day with my Nostromo and the many game profiles I have stored on it. For some reason the app went caflooey, I reinstalled it and all my local stored profiles were gone. Logging in, they popped right back in.

However this was it a game save, but a game profile, and for any game that is important to me, I make my own separate game backups.

 

[Sill]

Cloud storage just saved me the other day with my Nostromo and the many game profiles I have stored on it. For some reason the app went caflooey, I reinstalled it and all my local stored apps were gone. Logging in, they popped right back in.

However for any game that is important to me, I make my own separate game backups.

The last controller I had a personal interest in was the SpaceTec Avenger/SpaceOrb, which should demonstrate how long I've been away from action games. I had to look up the Nostromo device. Thats a fairly complex piece of gear. Is yours for FPS or .. ?

 

[Sill]

Cloud saves don’t preclude local storage, but if you happen to lose your progress, or play on a different computer, it’s a nice benefit.

As for online, I play a mix of single- and multiplayer games. While your friend group may largely prefer single player, there’s many people on the flip side of that coin.

I understand this but I don't really consider what others are looking for when I make a purchase.

Cloud based saves are better, in that if you needed to restore your computer, i.e., if something happened to your drive, or bought a new computer, or use a gaming laptop. Your progress is not lost

Ok, but couldn't you just have a ghost or Time Machine backup of your system on a separate drive?

 

[seek3r]

Ok, but couldn't you just have a ghost or Time Machine backup of your system on a separate drive?

Another use is if you game on multiple devices, it means you can, say, stop playing on your desktop and pick right back up where you left off on your laptop or steamdeck or etc while traveling, and then pick right back up from *there* on your desktop when you get home

 

[Huntn]

The last controller I had a personal interest in was the SpaceTec Avenger/SpaceOrb, which should demonstrate how long I've been away from action games. I had to look up the Nostromo device. Thats a fairly complex piece of gear. Is yours for FPS or .. ?

RPG, FPS, RTS. It’s just functions as a minature programmable keyboard with some extra buttons. Plus I have a Razer Gaming Mouse which has 12 buttons on the side, a total of 17 buttons or so just on it. There are games where I used many of the buttons on both devices which would be impractical if I relied on a traditional keyboard and mouse. I start with a piece of paper, write down what I programmed, and refer to that paper until I’ve memorized them and muscle memory kicks in.

 

[Mackilroy]

I understand this but I don't really consider what others are looking for when I make a purchase.

No, it doesn’t sound like it. I do, as it’s difficult to game with friends unless you play the same games together.