I wouldn't get my hopes too high.Steam was originally created to force people who wanted to play Half Life 2 to download their client.(Which was about as popular as you'd expect)

Correction: only the Source Half-Life games are DRM-free. Neither the original Half-Life, nor Opposing Force, nor Blue Shift (and most likely neither Team Fortress Classic) work without the client.

All Valve games have been severely discounted on STEAM every sale. For example the "Valve Complete Pack Bundle" is 88% off. Even if they decided to sell it on GOG, I doubt many people would be willing to pay full price, instead waiting for a GOG sale. It would be an anticlimactic release.

It seems that the trend is for publishers to create their own clients for their store, and the bigger ones have started releasing their games exclusively on their platform. Maybe this will put some dent in STEAM's iron grip on the market. However, Cyberpunk being exclusive on GOG would be a mistake. Unless CD Projekt can afford to take a huge hit on the game, they must release on STEAM. Maybe such a move would be beneficial in the long term... maybe, but Cyberpunk would have to be sacrificed, and even the game after that, before the STEAM exclusive players would be willing to buy on GOG.

I don't know if Valve plan on a GOG version but as others have said, only Portal 2 has CEG DRM ("Custom Executable Generation") = the .exe is unique to your hardware and if you change it you'll need to re-download. Half-Life (source) and Portal 1 are "functionally DRM-free" though, ie, once you've downloaded them the first time you can simply create a zip / self-extracting zip file of the game folder and treat that as your installer for future reinstalls by unzipping and creating a shortcut to the .exe without needing the Steam client / online authentication beyond the first install. I haven't tested HL, but I can confirm Portal 1 works fine without the Steam Client installed (shortcut link = hl2.exe -game portal), so given current dirt cheap sale pricing, you might as well buy that now than wait another +10 years.

No.

That is true and I have confirmed it. However, there is a caveat in which you do have to have the client. For me personally, that's fine, but for people who take no liking to even Galaxy this would be a deal breaker even when there are games on Steam that are Client-free. The caveat is that you need the client in order to download them or SteamCMD is another option assuming you're savvy enough with command line to use it but that also requires a download. So it's one or the other and I'd be happy in the case I'm mistaken. I'd love a 3rd way.

On the subject of Half-Life a user on this thread pointed out that Half-Life, the original could also be made client free.

By using Xash3D and that link describes how to do it. I've tried this and it seems to work. Portal 2 seems to be the only one out in Valve's lineup so far in terms of client-free. I'd love to see these games on GOG as much as I'd like to see Half-Life 3 but I have no idea how likely it is. My votes there either way.

Certainly. My disk copy isn't dependent on any client. Could be a pretty low hurdle to get around whatever DRM scheme is built-in.

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I don't see any particular reason why Valve would lose out by inking a deal for those old games on gOg. But I don't think they'd gain enough to make it worth the effort. Maybe some goodwill, but even that might not be worth the soon-to-follow constant pestering for them to release other games here.

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For CDPR to make Cyberpunk 2xxx a gOg exclusive? Eh, they might be able to get away with a store-exclusive deal for up to a week. Or maybe just a few days. More than that could be asking for failure. And there would be a whole lot of grousing from the 90%+ market share over at Steam, grumbling in a manner similar to what we heard over here about Kingdom Come's 2-week delay.

The price was never an issue for me, as I would have bought Half-Life 2 on day one with whatever edition I could have gotten in my hands had it not been infected with online activation. So by being able to resist playing that game this long, I now wouldn't even create a Steam-account to redeem it for free until Steam has officially started to advertise which of its games can be played without the client.

I have a better chance of winning the lottery. There isn't any real money or PR incentive for them to do something like that.

That would involve Gabe getting up off his fat ass and actually doing some work. So no I'm sorry.
Exclusivity is 99% of the time anti consumer. I'd think it would be a better idea just to promote the hell out of GOG with Cyberpunk. A few years ago they offered free gog backups of store bought copies of the Witcher. Maybe they could try something like that again. Even extend that offer to console versions. If they can afford it, it might be worth it.

This.

Well, CDPR has a good bargaining chip around the corner. I'm sure Valve wants their cut of CP2077 sales.

Sorry, but CDPR has absolutely no bargaining chip around the corner.
The only one, losing out, by not releasing Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam, would be CDPR.
Sure, Steam wouldn't make a cut...on one game.

On the other side, what would keep Steam-users, from simply resort to illegal measures?
After all: Cyberpunk 2077 will be DRM-free, no?

Just one mirror out in the wild - and people with no interest in openeing a GOG-account will be able to download and play CP2077, whether it is on Steam, or not.

And before somebody chimes in with: "Yeah, well...just because it's not on Steam, doesn't mean, Steam-users will pirate it!"

True! But let me ask you a simple question: If you want your game on Steam (and you would be willing to buy (means: pay for) it there, even if only during a sale)...but the game in question doesn't get released there, BUT is DRM-free (meaning: no restriction wahtsoever, to get it onto your HDD)...would you let yourself being restrained from getting it?

Or would you (just maybe) feel to have "the right", to get it for free - if only to spite CDPR, who dared, to not support your preferred online-platform?

And before you answer to that: think about, how many times you saw posts here on GOG, where piracy got advocated - by GOG-users.

Or think about other posts, where it came to the bottom line "GOG's not cheap enough"...many (most?) people will try to save a penny (or rather $60) whenever they can.

Now couple that thinking with the kind of entitlement (*), that sets in, whenever people don't get what they want
("I want my games on store X, and to hell with you, if you don't serve me there!"), and it's easy to see, what would happen.

(*) And I think, we all can agree, that there is quite some entitlement existing in the "gaming-community" today.

You know - lots of people love to throw a tantrum over "the greedy corporations", while at the same time downloading these corporation's work for free, because it would be too much asked of them, to open a new account, or - heaven forbid - just abstain from playing a certain game.

So, I really don't see CDPR on the winning side, should they decide, to keep their Game GOG-exclusive
(not, that they will do that).

It might be just one game, but it's still a big AAA game, likely to be very popular and make a lot of sales over the years. We're talking talking tens of millions of copies over 10 years if it's not a flop. What could be easier money than that for Steam? And this is their core business after all. So yes, Steam would be leaving a considerable amount of easy money on the table. And that's before we even consider the effect that luring potential customers away from the Steam platform would have. That's beside the point. If the game were not released on Steam, then such piracy would have no bearing on Valve's potential earnings and thus the bargaining power CDPR would have with them. No, and I never said that CDPR would "win" doing that. What I'm saying is that not getting the game on Steam would be a big loss for Valve too. And that makes it a bargaining point for CDPR. Of course Valve wants their millions of $, there is no question about it.

You might not be realizing what sort of money Valve is working with. They are HUGE. No one game can affect their revenue in a noticeable way. Even if a major publisher was to pull out (such as when EA did after launching Origin) it would only be but a small dip on a graph.

Actually, when that happened, nobody at Valve even talked about it outside of a few casual water-cooler conversations. It was just ... unimportant. So no, I wouldn't say that having or not having your game on Steam (no matter what the said game might be) would give you any bargaining power against Valve whatsoever.

Disclaimer: I no longer work for Valve, and haven't since 2015. All of the above are my own opinions and observations.