Even if I have to re-purchase Everything...

[MrThinker]

I'm not sure if this is still the case, but as somebody who migrated from ESO, I can confirm that I used to bypass the Steam related issues by simple making a shortcut to the launcher exe directly. It would ask me for password instead of automatically signing in, just like the standalone accounts, and I could log in even when Steam was down or experiencing issues.

Maybe this game will offer something similar? It's been speculated that they're doing this to appease Valve because Valve hates hosting games without DRM. However, many games with encrypted/protected executables do not actually need a constant internet connection to be played. For example, you can ply Skyrim when Steam is in offline mode. If the updated client for Steam does only the bare minimum stuff to appease Valve, then who knows? Offline mode might be an option.

So from what I've been told, the issue is that the game will require constant access to the steam authentication servers once this change goes through, as in your game sends info to the authentication server which then sends that info onto the game servers, and vice-versa. And because the info is being sent through the authentication server, it will be able to tell if you have logged into the game through Steam or not thus forcing you to start the game through steam. If the authentication servers go down like they were prone to do with ESO, there is literally no way for steam users to maintain a connection to the game servers, which is why there are so many people concerned.

Or so I've been told.

It seems to me that you may have actually transitioned from ESO before they made this change. Of course, I could be wrong.