Steam – the difference between a Steam game on CD and a download

The "restrictions" you're saying you've got on your account do not match up with what Steam call a "limited account" - it is probably worth contacting Steam support to discuss the issues you're having with the Steam store.

There are four methods of earning Snow Globe cards:

• Vote in the "Community's Choice" sale every 8 hours, for every three times you vote you get one card (that's one free card per day)

  

• Buying games/software from Steam: for every $10 you spend on Steam you get a Snow Globe card

• Trading with other players on the Steam market

• Crafting other badges will result in a Snow Globe card for each badge crafted

One thing to note is that getting Snow Globes by voting for the "Community's Choice" sale requires that you be level 5 already.

I believe the retail boxed editions of all the games you mentioned are tied to one of the digital distribution services. Specifically, Far Cry 3 uses UPlay, Crysis 3 and Medal Of Honor: Warfighter use Origin, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 uses Steam. You can verify this for these or any other game by checking the box. If they require an Internet connection to activate or play the game it should be listed as a requirement on the back of the box. If you can't check the box, you're just going to have assume it does require one.

As Ivo Coumans said very few PC games are being released these days that don't use some sort of online DRM. The exceptions are mostly indie games, and these games aren't generally available at retail. (Confusingly, the retail copy of game may have some sort of DRM even if there's a DRM-free retail version. This happened with the Witcher games.) The biggest PC game that I can think of that's been released recently and has a DRM-free version is Divinity: Original Sin. I don't think it's available at retail though, at least not in North America. The upcoming The Witcher 3 will be available DRM-free, but I don't know what the retail situation will be.

So if you want games that can still be played during the zombie apocalypse, or otherwise on a computer that will never be connected to the Internet, you have only a few options:

• Buy old games, ones even older than you mentioned, that don't use online DRM. Be sure to check the requirements on the box though. You have to go back a very long time to find a Valve game that doesn't require Steam, so there are few really old games that do require an Internet connection.
• Get a console. Microsoft was planing to implement online DRM for the Xbox One, but they had to back off from that, and so it's still the case that retail boxed console games don't require an Internet connection.
• Buy DRM-free games. Anything new you'll probably have to download from the Internet, but you can burn it to a DVD and still be able to install and play it after the collapse of civilization. The site GOG.com sells nothing but DRM-free games, and other sites like the Humble Bundle Store have a selection of DRM-free games mixed in with the ones requiring Steam or UPlay.

Personally I'm not too worried about zombies, but game companies have never been too reliable. I only buy Steam/Origin/UPlay games if they're $5 or less. I figure that a fair price for "renting" (or subscribing as Steam puts it) a game for an indefinite period of time. If one of these companies goes bankrupt or just arbitrarily decides to shut down their servers (as all their user agreements say they can do), I won't feel cheated.