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pedrovay2003: I know I'm jumping into this conversation late, but yes, this is exactly right. I've copied/pasted DRM-free Steam games to an external hard drive, literally built two PCs from the ground up without EVER allowing them to be connected to even a local network, installed Windows, and immediately copied/pasted the backed up games to the new machine without ever putting Steam on there with it. The most I've had to do other than just start the games is to manually install required stuff like DirectX, a setup file of which is always included with any games that need it; I've never had to touch the Internet or the registry.

The same can be said of the games I posted about in my other thread, detailing how to play actual Steam games offline forever. All you need to do is copy your backed up, Offline Mode-enabled Steam folder from one PC to another, and even non-DRM-free Steam games can be played on a brand-new machine without going online or installing anything extra.
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ErfInverse: Aaaaaahahahaha! Yeah, just keep believing this.. until the offline timeout runs out. It might be a month or so, a sufficiently long period of time like that to keep you falsely content and believing that the game will work forever.. until it doesn't.

The only way to keep Steam games working forever without going online is illegal. If I'm wrong on this, great, that would actually be a good thing. Maybe it works for some games, but I doubt it so strongly that I'm going to discount that possibility entirely.
Steam's Offline Mode is indefinite. It did run out once upon a time, but Valve confirmed that it wasn't supposed to work that way, and it was patched a long time ago. And even if it did run out, you can do a lot of things with Steam by simply turning the system clock back, so it wouldn't matter regardless. For example, the next time a free weekend is happening on Steam, download the game and let the weekend end. Then, put Steam into Offline Mode and turn your system clock back a few days and see what happens to the game. Steam is incredibly easy to manipulate with minimal effort and no illegal measures.

I'm all for GOG versions of games over Steam versions, but if a Steam game doesn't have CEG, then you won't have to worry about not being able to play it in the future. On that note, I'm also curious about The Witcher 3, as mentioned above. Does anyone have the Steam version? If so, can it be run without Steam, unlike the first two games?
Post edited May 22, 2015 by pedrovay2003
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pedrovay2003: Steam's Offline Mode is indefinite. It did run out once upon a time, but Valve confirmed that it wasn't supposed to work that way, and it was patched a long time ago. And even if it did run out, you can do a lot of things with Steam by simply turning the system clock back, so it wouldn't matter regardless. For example, the next time a free weekend is happening on Steam, download the game and let the weekend end. Then, put Steam into Offline Mode and turn your system clock back a few days and see what happens to the game. Steam is incredibly easy to manipulate with minimal effort and no illegal measures.

I'm all for GOG versions of games over Steam versions, but if a Steam game doesn't have CEG, then you won't have to worry about not being able to play it in the future. On that note, I'm also curious about The Witcher 3, as mentioned above. Does anyone have the Steam version? If so, can it be run without Steam, unlike the first two games?
It does appear to work that way now (thankfully) :) Speaking of Steam's CEG, I stumbled across something today that is both amusing and disturbing - Steam_api.dll in my GOG installation of Aarklash!
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kamil950: Anybody know if The Night of the Rabbit on Steam is DRM-free?
No, it's not.
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pedrovay2003: Steam's Offline Mode is indefinite. It did run out once upon a time, but Valve confirmed that it wasn't supposed to work that way, and it was patched a long time ago. And even if it did run out, you can do a lot of things with Steam by simply turning the system clock back, so it wouldn't matter regardless. For example, the next time a free weekend is happening on Steam, download the game and let the weekend end. Then, put Steam into Offline Mode and turn your system clock back a few days and see what happens to the game. Steam is incredibly easy to manipulate with minimal effort and no illegal measures.

I'm all for GOG versions of games over Steam versions, but if a Steam game doesn't have CEG, then you won't have to worry about not being able to play it in the future. On that note, I'm also curious about The Witcher 3, as mentioned above. Does anyone have the Steam version? If so, can it be run without Steam, unlike the first two games?
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Tarnicus: It does appear to work that way now (thankfully) :) Speaking of Steam's CEG, I stumbled across something today that is both amusing and disturbing - Steam_api.dll in my GOG installation of Aarklash!
Ooh, so, are we confirming that the Steam version of The Witcher 3 is DRM-free? Also, heh, yeah, there will be leftover Steam files in some games. :P
Some more DRM-free games. Tested on Win 8.1.

BANZAI PECAN The Last Hope For the Young Century
Barter Empire
Bastion
Bejeweled 3
Bionic Heart
Black Lake Prototype
Bloop
The Book of Unwritten Tales
Bravada
Orbital Gear
Shadowgate - Delete steam_api.dll
Starwhal
Found two more games that can be added to the list:

Gothic 3 (download 1.75 from the beta tab)
King Arthur's Gold

Both games were tested on Windows 7. There are probably more games to come as I'm in the process of testing quite a few at the moment.

A note to Gothic 3: The version you normally get when downloading the game is 1.60, which needs Steam to run. However version 1.75 that is finally available through the beta tab is identical to the retail version patch and therefore doesn't need Steam.
Does anyone know if I could kidnap Heroes of a Broken Land from my Steam-PC to my steamless netbook?
I just tested a few more games that I can confirm to run without Steam:

Bastion
Bejeweled 3
Driftmoon
Europa Universalis 3
Europa Universalis 4 (singleplayer only; multiplayer and dlc's require Steam)
Far Cry 2
FEZ (deactivate Steamworks in launcher)
Hammerwatch
Legend of Grimrock (rename steam.exe)
Legend of Grimrock 2 (rename steam.exe)
Stronghold HD
Stronghold Crusader HD
Stronghold Crusader Extreme HD
Super Meat Boy
Windward (singleplayer only; multiplayer requires Steam)

All games tested on Windows 7.

~~~

The following games started without Steam, but didn't work correctly:

Gunpoint (starts but crashes at title screen)
Multiwinia (starts but runs in demo mode)

When started through Steam they worked as intended.
Post edited June 19, 2015 by DCG83
Awesome, thanks to both of you! I'll update the wiki shortly. It's good to see more posts in this thread. :D
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DCG83: .... Super Meat Boy
Out of curiosity: since this game is known to be English only in the officially DRM-free version (you can access different languages using a tool but that's another story) I am interested to know if the Steam version running without Steam still have multi-language support?
Post edited June 20, 2015 by MarkoH01
Heroes of a Broken Land worked when I renamed the whole Steam-directory.
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DCG83: .... Super Meat Boy
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MarkoH01: Out of curiosity: since this game is known to be English only in the officially DRM-free version (you can access different languages using a tool but that's another story) I am interested to know if the Steam version running without Steam still have multi-language support?
It appears you can only change the language through Steam. For example the game only runs in German when I change it accordingly in the language tab. When I leave it on German, close Steam and run the game from within the install dir it's in English again. No files get downloaded or changed nor registry entries get altered. So it seems like Steam changes the language "on the fly" when run via the client or I haven't figured it out just yet. The localisation is stored in a file called "locdb.txt" by the way.

Edit: Ok, so the language gets stored in the corresponding acf file called "appmanifest_40800.acf" after closing the client. But when running the game without Steam it obviously ignores this file and therefore the game is still in English. So there's no way of changing the language without Steam.
Post edited June 20, 2015 by DCG83
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MarkoH01: Out of curiosity: since this game is known to be English only in the officially DRM-free version (you can access different languages using a tool but that's another story) I am interested to know if the Steam version running without Steam still have multi-language support?
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DCG83: It appears you can only change the language through Steam. For example the game only runs in German when I change it accordingly in the language tab. When I leave it on German, close Steam and run the game from within the install dir it's in English again. No files get downloaded or changed nor registry entries get altered. So it seems like Steam changes the language "on the fly" when run via the client or I haven't figured it out just yet. The localisation is stored in a file called "locdb.txt" by the way.

Edit: Ok, so the language gets stored in the corresponding acf file called "appmanifest_40800.acf" after closing the client. But when running the game without Steam it obviously ignores this file and therefore the game is still in English. So there's no way of changing the language without Steam.
That is what I thought. FYI there IS a way to change the language even without steam because a user made a tool for it:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2541828
Post edited June 20, 2015 by MarkoH01
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MarkoH01: That is what I thought. FYI there IS a way to change the language even without steam because a user made a tool for it:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2541828
Interesting. Thanks for the info.
Super Trench Attack! comes DRM free. Demo and game also available on official website
Just made a GOG wish if anyone interested : )