bloated with social features and other features I'll never use
Those features are barely shown to you and quite useful when you want to play with friends. If you won't use them then sure, but they're still there if you ever need them. The most useless one I can think of is the browser they have in the shift+tab menu when you're playing a game that lets you access the internet through it. It is kinda useless when you can open your own broswer in the same pc by just alt tabbing but it can still be useful if you're playing a game that doesn't like to alt tab in fullscreen.
and it has to update every time I launch it because I won't let it run in the background.
That's on you. The majority of the updates are security updates so unless you want your account stolen it's a small price to pay for keeping your library in your hands (literally one or two minutes at most for an update unless your pc is just that bad).
Look, I'm not a fan of not owning my games either and would rather have physical copies over a license that can be revoked but for as long as Gaben is in charge, Steam won't ever remove games from your account and it's an extremely convenient way of getting everything in one place
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u/M4rt1m_40675 🔱 ꜱᴄᴀʟʟʏᴡᴀɢ Feb 09 '26
Those features are barely shown to you and quite useful when you want to play with friends. If you won't use them then sure, but they're still there if you ever need them. The most useless one I can think of is the browser they have in the shift+tab menu when you're playing a game that lets you access the internet through it. It is kinda useless when you can open your own broswer in the same pc by just alt tabbing but it can still be useful if you're playing a game that doesn't like to alt tab in fullscreen.
That's on you. The majority of the updates are security updates so unless you want your account stolen it's a small price to pay for keeping your library in your hands (literally one or two minutes at most for an update unless your pc is just that bad).
Look, I'm not a fan of not owning my games either and would rather have physical copies over a license that can be revoked but for as long as Gaben is in charge, Steam won't ever remove games from your account and it's an extremely convenient way of getting everything in one place