You are still being weirdly vague about the medical conditions and how steam is triggering them, or what any of the issues actually are. Are you referring to visual impairments?
Sorry, wasn't my intent. I've discussed this a lot (it's been 4 years) so I sometimes forget what I have or haven't mentioned in a given conversation. Migraines and epilepsy are the most prominent issues, since both can result in hospitalisation in bad cases, but a few less severe problems like vertigo and several headache-related conditions as well. As far as I'm aware, the triggers appear to be photosensitive. Not "visual impairment" per se, but visual triggers, though some of the causes are less obvious on normal viewing of the app.
I personally get severe migraines, and have been in hospital for them a few times, including once when this issue first started, before I found out the Steam client was a potential problem in this regard. Steam isn't just "a" trigger for me, but the most consistent and fastest-acting trigger I've found. Having the Steam client installed is a serious enough risk for me not to be safe to do so, and Valve's conduct in response to being advised of the problem has at best made the issues more severe and harder to work around.
I do all of those things regularly. But I am also a gamer.
And surprisingly, given the question I'm asking, I DON'T use Steam. Because it's a literal health risk and I don't want to put myself in hospital with another migraine because of it.
Or did you not consider that asking for the game to be made available somewhere other than Steam was a part of my "not using it" process? Because yeah, asking devs to make sure their games are available elsewhere is a really useful way to still get to play games while not using Steam.
Kinda thought that would be obvious?
1. Only works for about 10% of migraine suffers.
2. Not a good workaround *AND* only works for certain types of photosensitive trigger, and rarely works for the ones setting off migraines.
3. Objectively false, it works on about 80% (and dropping) of games on Steam, but more reliably with much older games than anything in the past 5 years, with games from the past decade being more like 80% chance they won't run without the client.
4. The issues don't only affect people with migraines.
Appreciate the attempt to help though :)
1. A 90% failure rate (and yes, I looked into it in the past and that's the number quoted by multiple professionals who can cite research on the topic) isn't a good enough chance to be worth getting a piercing I don't want in the hope that it might help.
2. Partly untrue, and partly irrelevant to the reasons why it wouldn't help most people with migraines, and yes I've tried it and it doesn't help me.
3. That's nice. When I was still testing things, I found less than 2% of my library was safe to launch without the client, and it's a demonstrable fact that there are more recent games which can't be run without the Steam client than ones which can. It's entirely possible for someone not affected by the issues I've had to deal with to not notice when it opens as a background app, while someone whose condition(s) get(s) triggered by the client will noticed because they end up in pain/needing medication/getting an ambulance called to take them to hospital shortly after opening the game.
I've done plenty of testing of lots of possibilities which haven't stopped Steam from being harmful, and plenty of investigating of many more which I didn't feel were reasonably-priced or unintrusive enough to be worth testing personally. But, again, I do appreciate that you're approaching this with the intent to be helpful. It's not helpful, unfortunately, but I can tell that you want to help, so thank you for that much at least.
Just for full disclosure: Haven't heard any claims of daith piercings coming with any risks, other than the high probability of not having any effect. I have preventative medication with very minor side effects (totally ignorable if I have them in the morning and drink lots of water) as well as painkillers which the preventatives mean I only need maybe once a month instead of my previous frequency being comparable to your pre-piercing results.
I've heard of claims that it's a placebo, but been told it probably isn't, and that in the cases where it works, there's good reason to believe it's making a real difference, not just a psychological effect. Glad you've found something that works for you, and I do think it's worth recommending/considering for others with migraines, even if I don't think it's a good choice for me personally :) so, again, thank you!