Not sure what you have against Steam. It is a wonderful service as far as I'm concerned. I play games with friends and Steam makes this very easy. I also have multiple machines that I game from and Steam syncs my game progress. Plus, during the Steam Summer sale I get mildly aged great games for a song. So, not sure how Steam's DRM is screwing me.
Steam is a DRM platform, so you don't actually own a copy of any game you purchase there. Steam also monitors you, your game, what hardware you use and how much you play and resell that information to make extra money.
Further, Steam is just a retailer and does not make sure your games can actually run or run correctly. They don't care, and offer no money back guarantee - unlike GOG.com for instance.
In the case of a game like FTL you can't play it with friends anyway. You can't sync your game progress. Also, rebates and heavy discount is not exclusive to Steam at all. If you can get a game both on GOG.com and Steam they'll have the same price always.
So yeah, not much to like about Steam really - it's a bother one has to live with, when games are exclusive to Steam, but when it's available elsewhere I can't think of a single good reason to give them my hard earned cash.
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Not all games on Steam have DRM. FTL and others can be run without the client running. And of course there is offline mode.
While I have nothing against GOG, if I have the choice I go with Steam. I prefer Steam because it's convenient, and I like having as many of my games in one client as possible. The extra features such as achievements and trading cards only help.
What I do dislike is games that have additional DRM (like Ubisoft's uPlay). Unfortunately Steam can't do anything about it.)
There is nothing "spyware" about Steam, I'm not sure where you are getting that idea from. (Although that said, there is plenty to criticize about it--their support is abysmal, the Mac client feels like a Windows app, and they need to catch up to Origin in regards to returning games.)
The thing is that if you buy a game on GOG.com you don't need a client. No client necessary, just download the game and install.
Forget clients.
And yes Steam is a spyware, it's just not very secretive about it - but it monitors everything it can about you.
As for some games on Steam not having DRM, well yes and no. If Steam goes down you can run the game if you have it installed in some cases, but if you don't you can't. You're locked into their client - which is essentially a platform onto itself.
If you buy a game from GOG.com you get the installer and are completely free from the website or any online requirement forever. The game is yours to own, install at your leisure and use with any computer you want or need - no account, client or anything required.
They also offer a money back guarantee if the game doesn't run on your computer. I get that Steam is convenient sometimes, but in cases of better alternatives, I can't see a good reason for supporting Steam and it's incredibly average, client based, often DRM'd, spyware-y and quite limited service.
And yes the Steam client is terrible. Somewhat worse than the website, though not by much.
It's quite amazing that neither the Steam client or the website can manage to show you what games you already bought when browsing - the non-client based GOG.com shows you always at a glance what you own and what you do not own.
On Steam you have to click every individual title to see this and when a game has dozens of DLCs it's just inexcusable. This is 2014. Steam is looking more and more like a dinosaur of a DRM'd web 2.0 past.
