Swapping from Steam to non-Steam client?

[Velia]

I wouldn't say it's Valve. EQ2 and RIFT both have steam versions and the expansions are all the same, as is the logins.

And they are both old, largely irrelevant and were on Steam before Valve truly became avaricious and vile when it comes to DLC.
There is absolutely no benefit at all for SE to segregate PC versions like this. It loses them potential sales. On the other hand, this greatly benefits Valve, because it means they will get a cut for every Steam version of ARR.

This is 100% to Valve. Of course, SE doesn't really care enough to challenge them either. But for this reason I will never make the mistake of buying another game on Steam again, they have lost my business.