same as gOg:

you buy a game license, but you also subscribe to a service to manage your licenses / games

these are in fact two different and separate 'purchases'. so you buy a game license for the game, and then you pay Steam or gOg for managing the game (storage, update, meta-services and so on). If / when a service provider folds, you technically still own the game license. it is only the license provider (the publisher of the game), not the service (i.e. Steam or gOg) that can revoke a license

That is what I meant by unreliable, sometimes it works but earlier this year I couldn't play a game after a while of not logging in.

Steam offline mode and DRM-free games on Steam are two completely different things.

AFAIK, you can play any game on Steam in offline mode, at least for a while.
But games which don't use Steam client for anything else but being installed that way can be played on computers that have never had Steam client installed on them.

There is also something that might be called "grey area" where you can replace the game exe with a modified one, meaning that a game that might need Steam client can run without it. Sometimes you can simply use a no-DVD patch for older games, so the solution even predates Steam in some cases.

with me it is most of the time a proces that changed the system in any way, be it a windows reset for some reason or a update with a system impact that will trigger the online activation procedure for some games.

i have times that i also play offline for the bigger part of months or almost a period of 8 months a couple of years ago without any real trouble

Because you get "owned" everytime you fork over money for a DRM-ed game...

that's utter tosh and rubbish. off course you can sell a used toothbrush, there is nothing stopping you doing so if you find someone silly enough to buy a used toothbrush. there is absolutely no legislation against it. i can't really think of any physical goods you can not re-sell legally, as long as you are the legal owner of it

refunding is something else and very different from se-selling, so please do not conflate the argument

edit - mixing up my conflating and confounding....

I said "legally as they were originally sold to me". If you want to go down the route of finding an idiot who'll buy anything for cash in a back alley, then you can also make 100x copies of a disc and sell those, but that's not the same thing either... As for legislation, of course it exists. Why do you thing the Distance Selling Regulation makes exemptions for things like food, used bus tickets, etc, why charities can't accept your donated furniture with fire safety labels missing, why you can't sell unwanted prescription medication on Ebay, and why Trading Standards would have a field day if Tesco started selling used tampons, etc...

The fact is, there absolutely are plenty of physical goods you really cannot legally resell for legal / hygiene reasons. DRM-Free offline installers is just one of those special cases where people naturally accept they can buy it without being able to legally resell them on due to the inherent properties of the item.

yeah... that's illegal, and as I say, you can sell your used toothbrush legaly

no, you are now talking about legislation that are in place for established businesses and protection of cunsumers. you are again conflating the issue.

as a privat person I can legally sell you my used toothbrush, or old bread, or furniture without fire label. I can not sell you my gOg games.

This part, in particular.