/rant
I think I'm not going to buy the game at all! I mean what if the world seizes to exist on that particular day!
I have a feeling that steam as the major digital distribution platform that actually to some degree saved PC gaming is not going down in a single night just for the sake of it. It's bad buisness to everybody!
Besides it's not as if the game developers could not patch a steam release to actually run without steam if something magical like a unicorn running over Gabe Newell killing him and leaving all his shares to his 5 yr old son who then got tricked out of them by evil nazi-zombies from space whose plan on world domination included on runing down all digitally bought/licensed gaming software from steam for god knows what reason.
And third party this third party that. You're allready depending on a bunch o third parties to get your damn pc even runing that precious copy of windows that eventually with the right hardware and drivers lets you play IL-2:CoD. Not even taking into account your electric and internet providers.
The only real valid point with the steam haters is that it's an aditional process running you might not want there. Well I have a feeling your computer is runing a dozen processes that youre not using or ever will. Just imagine it as one among those that actually is usefull for something!
/rant off
I realy shouldn't visit to this topic