Steam has begun displaying a new notice in its shopping cart, explicitly clarifying the nature of the transaction: “A purchase of a digital product grants a license for the product on Steam.” The change is Valve’s way of complying with an incoming California law prohibiting digital marketplaces from implying that customers own the games, movies, ebooks, and other digital content they buy.
At this point, unless you can put it on a thumb drive and run it on any computer you meet without Internet connection…
You don’t own it.
btw that’s the case with most steam games. if it doesn’t have DRM, all you need is the goldberg emu dll and done.
Gog is pretty good although they mostly have older games and small titles. I don’t like there launcher as it is privacy invasive.
Luckily you don’t need to use their launcher. Just download and run the installer for the game.
Honestly I wouldn’t be shocked if there was some “remote kill” built into those local installers. For all you know it might delete itself on a particular date.