Let’s be clear. Both Steam and GoG sell you the same licence for a game.
Steam comes with optional DRM that requires you to use the Steam client. Whether or not this DRM is present on a game is the publisher’s decision, not Steam’s.
Steam could certainly be criticised for providing the functionality but it’s not mandatory.
Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam for instance has no DRM and can be run without Steam. Even if a game has Steam DRM it’s usually trivial to bypass it.
Let’s be clear. Both Steam and GoG sell you the same licence for a game.
Steam comes with optional DRM that requires you to use the Steam client. Whether or not this DRM is present on a game is the publisher’s decision, not Steam’s.
Steam could certainly be criticised for providing the functionality but it’s not mandatory.
Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam for instance has no DRM and can be run without Steam. Even if a game has Steam DRM it’s usually trivial to bypass it.
The official Stean documentatikn even says Steam DRM should not be used as antipiracy because it’s easily bypassed