Not currently in a place where I can check, but I believe pcgamingwiki.com has this info.
Edit: it does indeed. Lists available platforms and whether or not they have DRM, and/or what kind.
Spread that site around, cause I only came across it fairly recently and it has never showed up in web searches for me without me specifically looking for the site.
Any dev can decide to just not code their game in a way that requires steam. Valve doesn’t modify whatever the studio decides to ship in any that would change that.
When you want to run it, you go to the folder and double-click the .exe of the game.
If you want, you can drop a shortcut to that exe somewhere convenient.
“Installing” is just putting files in a folder somewhere, and maybe adding a shortcut to the start menu so the user can find and run whatever got installed. There’s nothing special about it.
Unless the .exe needs some other program to be installed, or some files that need to be available somewhere else (which these DRM free games don’t), you can just move the folder the game is in wherever you like, another PC even, and it’ll still run just fine.
Depends on the game.
There’s a surprisingly large amount of games on steam that are DRM free, meaning once downloaded, running the game doesn’t actually require steam.
Is there an easy way to check which games in my library are DRM free?
Not currently in a place where I can check, but I believe pcgamingwiki.com has this info.
Edit: it does indeed. Lists available platforms and whether or not they have DRM, and/or what kind.
Spread that site around, cause I only came across it fairly recently and it has never showed up in web searches for me without me specifically looking for the site.
They should all be like this.
GOG
I imagine it would be for older games though?
Why do you assume that?
Any dev can decide to just not code their game in a way that requires steam. Valve doesn’t modify whatever the studio decides to ship in any that would change that.
Wait… Half Life 2 is the game that forced me to install steam, create an account and wasn’t playable without it is “now” in this list and is DRM free?
Removed back in 2004, seems like.
But then, how do you keep the game for later, like reinstalling it on a system that does not run steam, that won’t work right?
Pirate magic, me boy!
It’s just a folder. You keep the folder.
When you want to run it, you go to the folder and double-click the .exe of the game.
If you want, you can drop a shortcut to that exe somewhere convenient.
“Installing” is just putting files in a folder somewhere, and maybe adding a shortcut to the start menu so the user can find and run whatever got installed. There’s nothing special about it.
Unless the .exe needs some other program to be installed, or some files that need to be available somewhere else (which these DRM free games don’t), you can just move the folder the game is in wherever you like, another PC even, and it’ll still run just fine.
This. I used to have a bunch of the games backed up on a hard drive because copying the files over & patching was faster than redownloading it.
Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V