I wonder why in these threads nobody ever says to just pirate Windows. It's not hard to do. Sometimes people will float security concerns but it's a safe process if you just load an official ISO and then crack it, and even if it were questionable on the security front it's not like you're doing anything that really needs that sort of security if you're just playing video games. If Windows is going to make itself mandatory for some games but they're also going to pull nonsense like in the OP, piracy seems like a reasonable option to voice your objections without abstaining completely.
And yes there are also ways to stop data collection if you're concerned about giving that to them.
> Sometimes people will float security concerns but it's a safe process if you just load an official ISO and then crack it,
What makes you think the crack you apply to your official ISO isn't compromising your OS?
> even if it were questionable on the security front it's not like you're doing anything that really needs that sort of security
If you're going to install steam on your PC, then you'd be giving an attacker access to your steam account and if you ever install or use a platform that doesn't already have your credit card info stored then the attacker gets your credit card data.
> And yes there are also ways to stop data collection if you're concerned about giving that to them.
This isn't true. There is no way to stop windows from collecting data. No version of windows is capable of disabling all data collection, and there's no setting you can configure that can't be undone by MS at any time, and without any notice at all to you.
At best, you can install a copy of windows on a machine that is left offline 100% of the time, but i think most gamers would find that unacceptable since even if you don't care about MMOs or multiplayer, steam is still pretty popular.
I don't object to the idea of pirating software you don't like, don't want, but feel "forced" to use, but the idea that there are no real risks to your security or your privacy by doing it is just plain wrong.
Just use linux. It can play plenty of games.
I guess the crack being FOSS with readable source code helps. It's a 9000 line cmd file with insane Windows-y things everywhere that make it hard to read, but being open at all and with that many users gives me quite a bit of confidence in it.