I keep seeing wishes for Half Life 2 and all that being DRM free. What most don't seem to know is Half Life 2 is already DRM free along with a lot of of other things on Steam.

Full list:
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_Big_List_of_DRM-Free_Games_on_Steam

We had a long time thread to track such games but was locked at one point. GOG's went on a lock spree because some butthurt people keep spamming every new GOG release with links to Steam, even the massive/free thread and community giveaways were a bit on shaky grounds at the time and the Steam community giveaway ended up disappearing.
There was one for Epic as well.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/steam_games_you_can_play_without_the_steam_client/page1
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/epic_store_games_you_can_play_without_the_epic_launcher

@ GOG I understand why you did it but it was a dick move...

Last I tired Half Life 2 will not launch with out steam anymore. Since it got the most recent update.

There is no such thing as DRM-free games on Steam. Not even a single one.

All these lists are initiated and maintained by people who failed to understand what DRM is in the first place.

If you care about having the DRM-free copy of the game, sure.

In terms of the DRM-free movement, I question how devpubs will know that a major reason you bought their game was because it was DRM-free. You'd have to go out of your way to contact them by reviews, email, or social media and then hope they're tracking that feedback. Whereas buying a similar game on DRM-free platforms like GOG, ZP, FF, etc. clearly tells them that DRM-free was a major selling point. If you buy on Steam, they're not gonna see your reasoning in their sales analytics.

Building on what vv221 also said. You still need Steam or SteamCMD at the very least to download the games, making them not 100% DRM-free. You have to go out of your way to use these 3rd party tools to access garden-walled games you bought when there should be no excuse not to download directly using a web browser.

Good to know. I will not download the latest version.

On my current version, I just unpack it to a directory and launch the exe. Works great. Since you know so much about it, care to elaborate?

Are you saying that you still need to use Steam to download it? That is the equivalent of having to use the GoG website to download a game here too then as you cannot download your game without logging in. See above.

Great links I didn't know about. Thanks!

Quoting PCGamingWiki, the exact same website hosting the list advertised in this thread: source

So why is it that the distribution is always excluded when talking about Steam games?

--- I can use any software interacting with Web standards in order to download a GOG game. There is no mandatory "GOG Web browser" that would have the exclusive ability to download such games.

So why is it that the distribution is always excluded when talking about GOG games?

Realistically I can see this thread getting locked due to people getting into the eternal argument of what the definition of DRM free is and belittling anyone that disagrees with there definition........ so business as usual.

It is not an argument. Just trying to understand his point. It is possible I am wrong, but I don't think so. I just tested the Linux version of Half Life 2. It works without Steam. I will now load Windows binaries and test that. So gar, we are still good to go!

Funny you should say that. You can actually use the Steam browser to browse the internet. I know because I've tested it. The Steam client is a safe, proprietary environment to shop in their store.

Forgot to add an alternative site for a list of DRM-free games on Steam (it's my go-to):
https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Trust me, every time the discussion goes to what DRM is it always leads to a circular argument about definitions and people accusing others of not being DRM free enough. It always happen.

I keep getting that error message when trying, but it's nice that you managed to get it loaded. Maybe I’ll try again in the future when I feel like playing Half-Life 2.

To be honest what is the point of this thread? Epic, EA app also have games that don't need client to start. I would still like to have HL2 on GOG some day. I have Condemned on steam which is DRM free, but I would still prefer to have GOG or even ZP version.

There are certainly games that are DRM free on platforms like Steam, Epic, and EA apps, but the number is quite small. Don't get me started on Goldberg; it has becoming less and less reliable for me. I shouldn't have to look for cracks to make my games DRM-free. That’s why I try to support GOG or ZP as much as possible.

Of course, there are some games that are only available on Steam, which can skip or just buy from steam. Do what makes you happy. Haha