You can absolutely retain what you've bought: all content is saved in the steam/steamapps/common folder. If you want you can rip those files out and run them se

You can absolutely retain what you've bought: all content is saved in the steam/steamapps/common folder. If you want you can rip those files out and run them separately with cracks or Steam emulators like Goldberg, but the supporting infrastructure and dependencies for games (like multiplayer services, matchmaking, official support) will be lost. Many games prefer to rely on Steam's platform and support for core features by their own design.