Comment Re:EA Origin (Score 1) 201
The only Steam games (and I have quite a few) I can't play offline are MMO games. The rest is perfectly playable, once installed...
The "once installed" is the rub. If you don't have Steam installed on your machine already, you can't play any Steam games. You can't install Steam without an internet connection. You can't install a Steam "Backup" without Steam installed, and if the game has Steam DRM, you won't be able to play it until it's phoned home once. So basically, all your Steam "Backups" are "worthless" if you want to do a fresh install when your internet connection is down, or after the eventual and inevitable demise of Steam.
I "have" a massive Steam library, mostly of very deeply discounted games, but I don't fool myself into thinking I own those games, nor even copies of them. If they weren't extraordinarily inexpensive, I wouldn't have bought them. The only Steam game which cost more than a few bucks for which I paid full price was Half-Life 2, and I will never pay more than a few bucks for any Steam DRM-protected title ever again, because of the DRM. I have personally encountered this scenario, and I don't want to encounter it again.
You don't need steam to play your games, just navigate to the install directory and launch the executable. If it's using steam as drm method the game won't launch but the vast majority of my games just start without steam installed.