Fair point, but if you're downloading through Steam, I don't see it as a big deal to run the game once using it. It doesn't change the situation much. If it had to be used regularly for validation or mandatory updates, that would be another story.

I see my "delete steam_api.dll" info was edited out from the Trivia section. Anyone know the reason? I think perhaps because it's not pan-applicable; I hate having to add that to the notes over and over, though, but I guess it's necessary ^^

edit: wait. I see that info when I logged into my account, but I didn't logged out. Wtf?

edit2: can anyone else not see the "delete steam_api" info in the Trivia section? The two most recent games I added don't appear to be there either. No one else has edited the page since I did it so this must be something else, I think.

@Maighstir: I'll try that for the next game, but I have copied folders to my travel PC, which never had/doesn't have Steam, and those games worked, so there's that.

edit: got it, thanks. I've contacted support.

I don't see it, and it doesn't work for all games.

I'm thinking of the possibility to move the game to a computer which never had Steam installed though, if Steam does anything (say, write some registry entries the game needs) outside the game dir that cannot be done via the bundled applications, the game might not be able to run on the other machine.
Yeah, that's the use case in question.

The 7th guest and 11th Hour are DRM free for the windows platform.

Thanks good to know. I thought they were in there, but I guess not. Will add time permitting.

edit: I added them. If you can't see them, then try logging in and then looking at the page; someone on wikia confirmed for me that they can view the recent edits on that page logged in/out, but I can't view them when I log out.

Interesting!

A note though: I don't actually know if Steam ever does anything like that, or if everything is in fact handled by installers and applications bundled by the game.

Steam's first-run installation process makes initial registry entries for the small percentage of games that won't work without them.

Added Redshirt and Space Empires IV Deluxe, the latter of which is currently 75% off right now, too :]

http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

The way Steam is set up it downloads the games directly into "ready to play" configurations, so everything should be fine on that front. For the rare games that require registry entries to function I would assume those could be added manually, so I'm not sure that counts as DRM (though it arguably counts as such a hassle as to remove them from the list).

Jagged Alliance: Flashback doesn't require Steam, as shown by Shanga in the linked video. JA:F also reposted it on their facebook page, so I doubt that's going to change when the game moves to beta/release.

Okay, so, I could use a hand testing a game.

I just tried running Sonic Generations while Steam was opened, but left at the login screen. I even made sure to log into Steam and manually choose to log out, so no temporary things would be left floating around. The game started, and it played perfectly. That combined with cpkredir, a mod that redirects the save files out of the Steam cloud folder and into the Sonic Generations root, would make this game DRM-free (well, as long as you don't mind having Steam at least installed on your PC).

Does anyone have a PC they can test this with? I don't have any around that I haven't logged into, so there may still be some temporary files that are making all this work.

Yeah, I just tried some stuff, and it doesn't work the way I thought it would, anyway. :( Well, it was worth a shot. And yeah, I know requiring Steam isn't exactly DRM-free; I'm just trying to get around the online requirement/license check at this point with some games.