Steam crashes my entire Linux system, so I'll go 100% piracy
The steam launcher is a mess, and Valve refuse to fix it. Seems like they don't want my money then. I have no trouble with running pirated singleplayer games through Lutris, so I'll just do that instead.
Well, hang on a second. I haven't used Steam in about 2 months now just as I'm studying, so maybe I'm missing some recent development, but Steam has worked for me near flawlessly on various Linux distros, from Ubuntu to Arch to openSUSE.
I'd say take a step back, I presume you're on Linux, and just make sure this isn't something your own PC that's causing Steam not to work. Checking logs and whatnot to at least begin with, checking how it's installed and if installing it in a different manner fixes it, basic troubleshooting steps.
Maybe Steam is absolutely borked, but usually, the way I see it is that realistically, if Steam works on popular distros like Ubuntu (which I imagine is the main one they would check against as well as whatever SteamOS is based on), then it's actually something wrong with my setup, and it's on me to fix or workaround. If its clearly something wrong with Steam, lodge a bug report. If they don't respond to you then I think sure you're justified to say they don't want your money.
Until then I don't think it's entirely fair to seemingly come out of nowhere, and instead of doing what most other people do and say "Hey, Steam's crashing and unusable, here's the info I have, help?" you look like you're just accusing Valve of not supporting your likely niche distro on your specific hardware.
Maybe I'm wrong about all the assumptions I'm making here but you're not exactly giving a lot of info here, and to me this just looks like an unproductive removedfest about a program, and I think that's why people are down voting your post.
I don't really care about this specific problem. I care about Steam being a bad experience in general. Look, I get that people are downvoting me because it seems like i am whining about something minor. But the thing is... if Lutris and Heroic Games Launcher work flawlessly, and Steam has always been wonky, why would I put my money there? Seems like Valve can't keep up. Unless they can deliver a good experience, they won't get my money.
Steam released an entire Linux OS; I think it's safe to say that Steam is on-board with Linux gaming in general. Everything has bugs. If you're just looking for a reason to justify piracy, then fine, but this seems a little out there. What will you do if Lutris releases with a bug that crashes your system? Switch to Windows? haha
I'd hazard a guess that most people down vote you not because you don't want to use steam or that you want to pirate, but rather because it's most likely something wrong with your setup and you can't be arsed to figure out what the problem is. Which might end up being a lot more serious than simply being unable to launch steam.
IMO, figure it out, get your system to work properly and then go pirate if that's what you prefer.
They did some patching for it today.
https://9to5linux.com/new-steam-client-stable-update-fixes-ui-issues-on-linux-for-intel-amd-users
Ooo maybe that will fix Cryptic's shitty launcher too but I doubt it.
I had a problem using Steam as flatpak - after downloading ~15GB the system may freeze or after playing for some hours. If you're using PopOS you should disable flatpak installations and install everything via deb-file.
Doesn't really apply to me since I'm on fedora and had it installed through RPM Fusion. And even if it would work again, it wouldn't get me to reinstall it, since it doesn't fix the underlying problem of the launcher being simply bad and restrictive.
I can't speak for fedora tho. Some search queries later the issues of other ppl sound similar to my issue.
Which problems do you actually have? For me there ain't any restrictions.
I can install everything easily - for demos or similar software which can't be added to your library instantly, you should enable Steam Play for everything.
Works perfectly fine for me, tried it on Linux mint, Fedora and steamOS(obviously it works there)
Obviously not applicable to OP since they want to pirate but I'll add my two cents and say that BTRFS would cause Steam to freeze my computer. Disabling CoW on impacted directories made the problem lesser. I have since switched to ZFS and couldn't have been happier with it.
@boo Definitely fascinating to me: I've been using EndeavorOS with BTRFS and steam and haven't had any problems beyond issues that related to my games that were on my Windows NTFS disk. Glad you got yourself sorted though!
It's just so much nicer to not be bound to that software. I want to own the files on my disk, and not be forced to tiptoe around them through a restrictive UI. The issue I had was really just the straw that broke the camel's back.