with energy blackout you probably wont have time or energy to play anyway

Depends if your residence has solar panels and live in a consistently sunny place.

I was the opposite. So my family went to a rural area for over a month with no internet at all, so I filled my laptop with many downloaded steam games. But after almost a month all games failed to start and Steam keep demanding me to go online. That was when I decided to find no DRM solution and found GOG. I only use Steam for online games like TF2 and Battlefield games.

Sometimes, the bigger they are...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am?wprov=sfla1

With a power blackouts, how does the average joe download the game? Better yet, on computers that need that power to remain on? How many people actually back up their GOG games? I bet it's a lot less than you'd think. Anyway, why will there be blackouts? Has Brandon done something silly... again?
How many of the games did you start before you left? I don't know if it's still a thing, but it was always wise to load the game online just once before going strictly offline. My laptop had dozens of games on it and was in Steam offline for years. But they were all "activated" first.

Batteries,solar power,generators or bicycle connected to a generator to exercise while you game. :P

When I give them my hard earned money, then I deserve to immediately play it after download. This BS "Authentication first" is just another stupid DRM step.

Oh yeah, I already purchased this house! But I'm not the owner unless I sleep in the house for at least night? I purchased this car but I'm not the real owner unless I ride it around Portland? Oh yeah waitress that's the food I ordered, what? What do you mean I have to at least lick the food to claim it as mine? I PAID MONEY FOR THAT GAME FOR F U C K SAKE!

Also dear GOG, I know what you did there. I'm a grown man and I use the F word to emphasize my comment. I'm not a 14 years old who use that word like sailor that gone thru surgery without anesthesia.

we have a new puppy
i think if we hooked her tail up to a generator we could power our house, the house next door, the one next to that, the town, the county, the region....

Pretty much, and don't forget Steam already uses a subscription contract.

It would be bit by bit, but yeah. Something like that's going to happen.

Ironically, given how they've acted in recent times, Microsoft would be the best company to buy them out, but I doubt they'll be able to due to Antitrust.

Was the laptop never connected to internet during all those years, even for a brief moment?

Keeping Steam in an offline mode on a computer that still is sometimes online, is a different thing from a Steam PC being completely offline for longer periods of time.

And yeah I had the same thing as RedRagan once. Games that I had already played on Steam, none of them worked anymore when I had no internet because when I tried to run the Steam client, it demanded I have to go online before it would let me proceed. There was no offline option to fall into.

Then again, I am sure some of those installed Steam games could have been still run, by just running the game executable manually (without trying to run the Steam client). But that is the unofficial way.

Games without drm are always going to be safer than a platform in which all your games are for rent and have their respective control through drm.

I do think the energy blackout will have a big impact for international audiences. An energy blackout in the US does not necessarily mean that there is a global blackout. Steam servers needing to be active for a user to play the games they purchased is a legitimate concern and Im not sure that Steam will set up additional servers globally to ensure business continuity. In those cases, GOG without DRM is the most optimal bet.

I do think GOG should promote this aspect and actively discuss why DRM-free is good. Having only just recently joined PC master race, I only knew of the big 3 (Steam, Epic, and GOG) and tbh didnt really understand what DRM-free meant, let alone what advantages I as a consumer gets to retain by going DRM-free apart from a sense that I have greater ownership of my games than I do at other platforms and modding becomes more feasible (a big part of why I transitioned to PC).

Showing that this additional ownership allows users to more freely mod and ensure they can continue to play their games is a huge plus over other services.

Worse yet, imagine Steam owning Disney... ;)

That might work...

Though if you are relying on a solar/wind farm, power transferred has to be within 2 miles to be efficient (i think i read somewhere) meaning solar/wind can't power a large area. Among other problems. Although you might get plenty of power sometimes, I'd think with solar panels you're better off low powered, so larger computers is a no-no, while laptops tablets and others would be a better choice.