I understan that you need to use it, but personally I dislike Steam. I know that I'm kind of crazy, but I've begun to categorize games which require Steam as "Online Games" - because Steam is basically an "Always On" DRM like Blizzard has used now as well (and before that Ubi Soft was using it).
I#m glad that Steam isn't required for local multiplayer games, though. Although I'll most likely never get the possibility to do so.
To be frank, Steam is to me nohing but an a) "implicite DRM system", b) a massive taker of harddisk space, c) a massive taker of RAM. At least in its default form, when it is loaded each time the PC starts.
Steam does not require you to be online. Only time you need to be online is when you activate a game. UNLESS the game itself has some of its own DRM included. But steam has a offline mode that works good.
But I understand you rather not have steam and only want to install the game itself to play.
