as in the topic, what gives?

They claim that Steam is too deeply ingrained in the game and it would take a lot of effort to get rid of it.

But I call BS, because I have a pirated version for portability (have the game on Steam too, so no worries) and it works just fine without all the Steam stuff.

doesn't make sense to me either. maybe it's just the multiplayer aspects? can you multiplay on your non-steam version? well i learned something new, i thought SS the second encounter was SS2. i remember SS being a lot of hard work without friends helping, but still as you said it'd be better than no gog access to the games at all.

Honestly don't know. Never tried it but I assume not. That's usually how it goes with cracked versions. Definitely not on official Steam servers.

But yeah, that is one thing GOG would have to do. Redirect multiplayer to their own servers.

sorry if I necro, I ended up here since I was wondering about Serious Sam 3 on GOG given your recent post. I guess that the pirated version is emulating the Steam client, so it can't just be sold elsewhere as it.