Just my opinion, but some may like Steam but to me if I could run some games without it I would.
For example I can't seperate my Call of duty:MW3 shortcut from Steam (sorry Mstenger404 ... it doesn't work for me). So I'm forced to launch that game from within Steam. I have tried several ways to create the Call of duty:MW3 shortcut on my desktop, but so far have had no luck
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Also, I've had to delay Steam in my computer startup because it uses quite a bit of resourses .
I guess one good thing about Steam would be the Steam cloud that stores my game stats & friends list.