I did help him, I already bought starsector, then bought it for a couple of friends, just not a real big fan of steam, mainly because with steam you technically don't own your games, you lease them.
This is the case with all game purchases (or the purchase of any copyrighted media). You are buying a license to use a copy (or copies) of the software under certain conditions and limitations. If you truly "owned" it, you would be free to make as many copies you liked and distribute them as you see fit.
Steam just adds the condition of "you have to come online at least once and sign into our program" in order to use your licensed copy.
Yeah but say your steam account is locked, you have NO access to any games on steam EVER. Until they either decide you are not at fault or they ban you. Steam is just a true lease, until some magical gremlin messes up your account, it has happened before. Like when I was deployed someone tried to use my steam account, so valve locked it, got back home from deployment, says it was banned, I had to show proof that the IP address that tried to access the account was from the US and not where I was deployed just to get all my stuff unbanned.
Steam will close an account if it is from a different IP, last I checked Alex's game doesn't do that
Still rather get the game from Alex though.