valve (actually the devs) does not put DRM restrictions into most games. most of them don't work without steam because the developer coded it with the expectation that steam will always be there, and that can be fixed with the goldberg steam emulator.

most games you can just download from ypur library, prepare it for goldberg, and it will work without steam

I have this mentality too so it's really weird for me to see so many people just blindly praise Valve. Corporations have great track records until they don't. Don't get too comfortable.