Having enjoyed Crysis and Crysis Warhead that I bought in the recent GOG sale, I was thinking about getting Crysis 2, which is available on Steam.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Crysis_2

This website says it has DRM called Solidshield in it, but that it is inert. Should I buy or not?

Does solidshield install things on your PC that are hard to remove like SecuROM did? Wondering if I should be concerned.

imho it should be illegal for apps to keep crap on pc after uninstall

I cant say anything about solidshield specifically, but i THINK the Origin version contains nothing other than a client check (like the origin version of Mad Max). You'd have to look into that to be sure though (or maybe somebody who has it there will chime in).

it was in the HB origin bundle years back so theres a good chance of an owner coming forth.

From what I understand it had to do with activation limit, still it falls in the crap category, same as any other type of DRM.
Such practices should not be supported, since they are clearly anti-consumer.

Tages is the same company that messed with Riddick and The Witcher, if I'm not mistaken.

I would definitely skip it.

I actually have the retail release of the game, so i can elaborate what this is. You can install the game on 5 machines. There is a tool to monitor your activations. I think you can revoke activations if you have used up your activations via the tool iirc. When uninstalling, it revokes an activation, i.e. You need internet for both activation,installation / deactivation, uninstallation.

Since this is drm-free gog store, i would say drm bad BUT, for transparancy, if you are buying on steam, which has multiple drms anyway, it really isn't too much of an issue. You shouldn't see any blocking. If you're for example using multiple accounts to play a game, such as uplay and steam, it's technically easier to launch the tool, deactivate existing activations and then activate it for the current system in the worst case scenario.

Conclusion, solidshield is reasonable for steam. Die-hard drm-free answer, keep away. :)