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SPOILER INFO
This article doesn't contain any spoilers.
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As far as I am concerned, Steam is malware.
Firstly, it uses absurdly much hard disk space and absurdly much memory for an app that has no other function except to tell the Skyrim app that I am a legitimate user. I'm not saying Steam is putting any strain on my computer. Not at all. It's simply suspicious that it uses far more disk space and memory than its legitimate function can possibly require. For all I know, the Steam app could be sending all the files on my hard disk to Google little by little.
Secondly, it displays unsolicited commercial advertisements (misleadingly called "news") – admittedly, in its own window only, so I only see it when I happen to look at the Steam window, but still, Steam has no business spamming a paying customer with ads. Unwanted advertisements are only okay when you get something useful for free. Steam is free all right, but it is of no benefit to me and I would have never installed it if I didn't have to. I only installed it because it's a requirement to run (a legitimate copy of) Skyrim.
Thirdly, Steam makes it extremely hard for the user to keep it offline. It is desirable for Steam to be offline, so that you won't end up unable to play Skyrim just because your Internet connection is down. But you have to think about it in advance, because you can only order Steam to work offline while you are online. It's crazy! (Someone wrote in a forum discussion that it's not true. It would have been easier to believe him if he had bothered to tell us how to make Steam work offline while you're not online. I haven't been able to figure that out.) And on top of that, even if you have set Steam to work offline, it goes automatically back online every time you relaunch it. The only way to keep Steam actually offline is by 1) going online; 2) setting Steam to work offline; 3) creating a rule in Windows Firewall, forbidding the Steam executables (two if I'm not mistaken) from accessing Internet. If you fail to do step 3, then the next time you launch Steam, it goes online and sets itself to work online only, so you're back where you started. An app that so blatantly defies user's choices is undoubtedly malware.
Now to the good news.
Why do we execute Steam in the first place?
Because Mod Organizer requires it, right?
Well, not quite.
When you execute TESV via Mod Organizer, a message box pops up telling you to click "OK" once you have executed Steam. But, as I accidentally discovered, MO doesn't really mean it. You can simply click OK and never mind Steam. TESV will still run.
Sure enough, the Steam login window opens at the same time. But you can simply minimize it and forget about it. You don't have to click on anything in it. It's enough for MO that the Steam process is active. MO doesn't care if you don't reply to any of Steam's prompts.
(Don't click "quit" in the Steam window, though. Then Skyrim won't launch.)
I wish I had discovered it earlier – or that somebody had told me.
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