That's why GOG.com is my first choice. They even provide a nice Steam-like installer (unfortunately, no Linux version of the installer), while letting you download your games DRM-free, archivable and standalone.

Not all of the games on GOG are DRM-free at this point. Some require GOGGalaxy, their version of the steam client. I went through a frustrating refund process after learning about this after making a purchase.

I have yet to find a game that absolutely requires Galaxy. Could you share which game was it?

Hero's of Hammer watch required it, and would not run without it.

Only game that requires Galaxy is Gwent, and it's free to play.

Really? That sucks, DRM-free has been their major selling point from the start. Why was the process frustrating and which game was it?

There are a number of tools called “steamworks emulators” that allow one to bypass this outright for many games. These are generally seen as piracy tools, but there’s no good reason you couldn’t use them when you wanted to play your purchased game collection without DRM.

Be a bit careful when experimenting, though. You may run into problems syncing your cloud saves for some games if/when you go back to the official client.

Now you've swapped one attack surface for another (of a dubious origin).

Open source. https://gitlab.com/Mr_Goldberg/goldberg_emulator

As you'd expect there are (or were, a few years ago when my account was temporarily banned for a few days) cracks to unlock the executables. You might need Steam still installed for this to work the first time, I'm not sure.

Legally I don't know where that stands, but morally I'd say we have a right to play the games we paid for.

Uhg, this drives me nuts. Apparently I'm not allowed to play Sepiko: Shadows Die Twice while traveling outside of the country. A VPN can temporarily get things going again, or staying in Offline mode, but what a pain in the ass...