this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2026
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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All steam games are drm free by default. They literally have been since day 1. Even the half life games are drm free... Literally always have been.
I'm getting real fucking tired of people not understanding the fuck steam drm actually is.
It's optional and ENTIRELY up to the dev to use.
Steam games come bundled with a SINGLE dll that hooks into steam for the overlay, cloud storage and other steam features. But this dll is NOT required and can safely be deleted. Steam ALSO supported turned the dll off via a single txt file.
Both cause the game to be simply launched from its normal exe and they never have a check in.
I have over 300 games iv bought from steam that sit on a hard drive and can be launched with out steam ever having been installed on a computer.
Steam first and foremost is just a patcher and download manager. If you don't need to update your game then you can just slap it in a. Thumb drive and take it with you.
The only reason you NEED steam actively running. Is for steam functions, such as online play for some games that use steam servers and not there own. Games that optionally have chosen to enable the drm function. Or to update your game.
That's it.