that’s odd, my (indirect, reported by others) experience with GlobalProtect on Linux was mostly fine, although when using SAML it only really works with the GUI version and not the CLI version

it’s clearly 3, stop spreading misinformation

I have a large library of games I’ve never played on stream. a couple months back I wanted to play a game I had installed a while ago and guess what, forced always online. not from steam, but from the shitty team behind doom (don’t remember which version it was), which just happened to be at the time I had a multi hour internet outage.
afterwards I figured out I had to explicitly block some network traffic to stop it from trying to force me to sign up for an account with the developer.

while steam certainly has DRM options, they are configurable by developers and afaik can’t enforce an always online requirement with just steam, only though custom logic in the game or third party DRM. developers are also free to not use steam DRM.

DRM, as usual, harms the legitimate buyers.

that being said, steam still does bring a lot of value, such as their hardware developments, their work on better Linux gaming support, the update distribution through a trusted source, and various others.

you’re not getting banned from steam, you’re generally getting banned from participating in anti cheat secured lobbies of a single game or a group of games.

single player experience is generally not affected.

having a 3 strike system before getting banned from multiplayer just means it’s 66% cheaper for a cheater to get a new copy of the game.

this is also not new and has been the case for the current family sharing system as well.

here’s also some more context and explanation about what’s going on:

https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9psdqurvye
https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9psnooe6p1
https://fedi.fyralabs.com/notes/9pth6oh3xr