&gt; [Steam] has a slow load time.<p>Odd. On my six-year-old potato PC, Steam takes 10 seconds from the time I click on the Steam icon until the time the UI is up and I can interact with it.<p>&gt; ...if you haven&#x27;t played a steam game in a while and you want to run one, you might be looking at a good few minutes before the game even starts to load. In the name of what, stopping piracy?<p>Probably in the name of downloading and applying the most recent game patch. On the off-chance that you <i>weren&#x27;t</i> talking about patch downloading, I started a game in my library that was installed, but that I hadn&#x27;t played in over a year. It loaded just as quickly as any other game in my library.<p>If patching bothers you, run Steam in Offline Mode.<p>&gt; ...I wish they just let me run a the game without running Steam.<p>If you want to go <i>that</i> route, you can probably find any number of methods to spoof the Steam DRM.