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I’m not sure the actual answer to that.
There are some games that aren’t DRM free on Steam that do go on GOG and remove the DRM. In some cases (unfortunately) the GOG version doesn’t get consistently updated like the Steam version.
It’s kind of a habit for people telling you about GOG deals or promos to mention that it’s DRM free whether the Steam version has DRM or not, because DRM free is the primary selling point of the store. (They also sometimes include hacks/patches to deal with compatibility with modern systems that aren’t always on the Steam version.) It isn’t necessarily meant to imply that any other versions have DRM (though in a lot of cases they do).
90% of the time Steam games do have DRM. Especially the AAA titles.
At some level, even a “DRM Free” game like The Witcher could still be argued as having DRM since you need to authenticate your purchase with steam to download it.
But you need to do the same on GOG, no? So that’s kind of a silly argument imo.
Once it’s downloaded, you can copy the game directory somewhere else and never need to download it again.
Pretty close to the same at least. The main distinction would be that the Steam version still requires a copy of Steam to be running and logged in on the computer you copy it to, which at least means Steam has to have been online once ever to get the account logged in before using offline mode. GOG has offline installers that can be backed up and used without any client.
For the vast majority of use cases, it’s a pretty minor difference, but one way in which it might be significant is that the GOG installers will never stop working, but if one day years down the road Steam were to shut down, the Steam version could only run on computers that could be running offline-mode Steam. There’d probably be ways to break that simple bit of DRM, but a legal offline installer is a very nice bonus for things like archival sites or research applications.
It’s the kind of thing that even if you’re not choosing to use it, it’s nice that it exists, and hopefully it can continue to.
I don’t think you do need Steam running. If it’s truly DRM-free, just copy the game directory to a new machine and the game will run. Don’t launch through Steam, launch it directly from the game directory.
I’ve run games directly without Steam running on a handful of occasions, such as when someone else is using my Steam account (e.g. my kids on my other computer) and I want to play a game. I could probably play in offline mode I guess, but running it directly isn’t that hard.
It’s not an installer, but I don’t need an installer when I already have all the game files in one directory.
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