It allows you to play your games offline though, so if Steam's servers go down you can still play your games. I'm not sure if that's permanent or if you need to reactivate your DRM / license every once in a while though.

Around a decade ago i had to move to another city and spent a few months without internet. I had all my favorite games downloaded on Steam and was able to play them offline with no issue for all that time. Not sure if it still like that, but it was possible back then.