These are completely different things. First we are talkng about business rules/laws and you are talking about something between friends and family. Second there are billions of houses but just one steam which as I said will lead to problems. It is exactly the thing steam is trying to avoid - being called a monopoly.

This summarizes it very well

Steam is the best, rather you like it or not. There's a reason why it's the most successful. If it ever goes down, they will let you keep the games DRM free. So why would anyone hate it? Steam literally saved PC gaming.

Edit: nevermind, no point wasting time on another Steam zealot.

AB2012 literally facepalming like Picard as he goes to fetch the link to prove it's a load of bullshit
EDIT: Nevermind AB2012, I found it for you:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/has_gog_said_what_would_happen_to_our_games_if_it_shuts_down/post32

Me literally facepalming like Picard

You just have to give all the other garbage launchers some time - eventually, they also will be around for well over a decade - and then you can accept them just like you accepted EA's, Ubisoft's and Rockstar's launchers.

Let me just quote this for posteriority.

It's certainly annoying but at the end of the day, forced clients are a DRM issue and if people really hate them then they need to be more vocal about that underlying cause rather than just complain about one symptom of it. Perfect example you brought up - It's crappy that another launcher was added to Bioshock, but those of us who had the DRM-Free version backed up offline never had any store client (eg, Steam) force an update that forced another client (eg, 2k launcher) into it in the first place...

Yes, forcing the need for a client until they generated a captive audience then bait and switching out discs for "Steam key in an empty cardboard box". It's only 'wrong' when someone else does it though, right?... ;-)

Debunked urban legend. Gabe never, ever "promised" anyone any DRM-Free versions if Steam closed. It's an urban myth Steam fanboys desperately want to believe is true more than it has ever been.

Not sure what you're smoking there but "Gabe = saviour of PC gaming" has always been a hilarious divorced from reality delusion. PC gaming was actually pretty healthy during 2000-2004 (Age of Empires 2, Age of Mythology, Baldur's Gate 2, Call of Duty, Civ 3, Deus Ex, Diablo 2, Doom 3, Far Cry, FEAR, Freelancer, Gothic, GTA 3, Icewind Dale, Medal of Honor, Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, No One Lives Forever 1-2, Operation Flashpoint, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Rise of Nations, Serious Sam FE/SE, Star Wars:KOTOR, Splinter Cell, Syberia's, Tropico's, Thief 2-3, UT 2004, etc) was multi-million selling hit after hit (and count how many were new IP vs today's mindless sequelitus / remakeitus which is where I see the real decline).

Likewise, the bulk of mid 2000's AAA games didn't even arrive on Steam until 2007-2010, eg, Far Cry (2004) only arrived on Steam in April 2008, FEAR (2005) only arrived on Steam in May 2010, Oblivion (2006) only arrived on Steam in June 2009, Deus Ex (2000) took until March 2007, Serious Sam FE & SE (2001-2002) took until 2010, etc. It typically took until 2010-2012 before games were launched Steam only (eg, Dragon Age Origins (2009) and Oblivion (2006) were all on CD-ROM whilst it took until Bioshock Infinite (2012), Dragon Age: Inquisition (2014) & Skyrim (2011) until there was no disc option of the same series). Most 2000's AAA's could actually be bought only on disc until at least 2008.

Every feature that people remember "choosing in 2004" came years post-launch (2007 - Search, friends & gameplay tracking, 2008 - Steam Cloud & Achievements, 2010 - Mac support & discounts finally shown as percentages, 2011 - Steam Guard, Workshop & In-game micro-transactions, 2012 - Steam Market, Greenlight, Linux support & Walkthroughs, 2013 - Steam Family Sharing, Big Picture Mode, Game Reviews, Trading Cards, Early Access & user-created categories, 2014 - In-Home Streaming, 2015 - Refunds, etc). Far from "saving PC gaming in 2004", from 2004-2007 Steam was a barren, featureless, devoid of 3rd party AAA's, HL2 DRM-wrapper that almost no-one "wanted" to use at launch until years later...

You can still play the original Final Fantasy 7 by using some "workaround", basically by using a custom launcher.

However, there is something that have to be taken into account, else it may not work anymore. I may put a short guide in some hours along with some background, when i got time left.

The list of "good" DRM free games on/ Steam:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/good_games_that_are_available_drmfree_but_currently_are_not_sold_on_gog/post103

Oh come on, you made one hell of a retort and I loved every word of it.

Also Final Fantasy 7 always required a Square Enix account since it launched on steam.

LMAO. "Before Half Life 2 there were no PC games at all to play. Then King Gabe I stepped out of a phone-box, his cape flapping in the wind and single-handedly saved PC gaming". I genuinely refuse to believe people actually exist who genuinely believe that.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Steam spent the first 2-3 years of its life as a glorified Half Life / Counter Strike wrapper with most people's Steam game list looking exactly like this (ie, typically 4-8 games, all made by Valve, and most of them Counter Strike mods)...

Which is hilarious, cause I remember everyone crying about how steam didn't offer any refunds or any streamlined process for those claiming there were refunds prior to this point.

But now that they added it, everyone's harping about it. Completely forgetting that refunds were only possible thanks to legal shenanigans IIRC, probably by the EU or some governmental entity. Maybe the real savior of PC games will be governments.
The amount of windows it's taking in the XP task bar... damn, it almost looks like my browser tabs. (Which I should fucking clean up)

It was hellishly buggy at the time. Imagine a Steam Client running on Internet Explorer 6 level of netcode, same era and "save gaming" it most certainly did not. ;-) I think I installed it once (and uninstalled it same day) because a friend who came over wanted to play Counter Strike. Everyone else was more into the much bigger Quake 3 / UT2004 scene at the time. And you didn't need a client to play those over a LAN... ;-)

Nope. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/c0rtms/what_happens_to_our_games_if_steam_shuts_down/

What if Steam would have never existed, and Games for Windows Live, would have remained the main platform for PC games? Was GOG popular enough at the time to become anywhere near a competitor? Absolutely not. I didn't used Steam before 2014, but I can tell you that the convenience of Steam was the reason why I stopped being a pirate. Having physical releases with no benefits, and not being able to play the games without a disc if you don't want to use a no disc crack, plus no discounts wouldn't have benefited PC gaming in the long run once the PS3/360 generation came.