What is 22chan's stance on steam privacy-wise? According to the software watchdog[1], it is spyware.
One thing to understand however, is that once you have a closed-source program on your computer connecting to the internet, you have little way of knowing which data they collect and what they do with it. So IMO you might as well assume that all closed-source online software is spyware. I don't trust privacy policies much and they typically say they can do whatever they want and change the conditions whenever they want anyway.
Now, considering that very few games are open source, the vast majority of games that connect to the internet should be considered spyware. Windows itself too, since it is notorious for being awful privacy-wise.
So ideally, I think your options would be to:
>Play offline games on an always offline windows machine>Play offline games on linux+wine while firewalling them>Play open source multiplayer games on linux>Play closed source multiplayer games on linux+wine if they offer servers for private hosting, you are the one hosting, and you firewall all connections not strictly necessaryPersonally, that's a bit much for me, so I compromise by dualbooting windows and keeping all the spyware on the latter. At which point steam is pretty low on my list of concerns. Valve's generally good reputation certainly helps, and they have been supporting and promoting gaming on linux with their steam decks which is nice. But of course, it would be better not to use steam, or any closed source software for that matter.
[1]
https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/steam