Well, you can uninstall Impulse and run Stardock's games just fine.

That said, in about a month's time I believe, SD will be back to doing it themselves.  I'm hoping they just bring back the Stardock Central name instead of getting fancy with it.  You can choose Impulse or SDC- and I believe transfer as well.

Also, Impulse could probably lose 90% of its business and stay afloat, so I don't think they go under for a LONG time, though I believe they will eventually.  I don't think anyone likes them now.  The casual community never did, and the folks who supported Impulse for years felt like they were given the middle finger.

It depends on the game.

A lot of games will run fine just by running the .exe directly (and won't try and start steam in the process)

Examples are tropico 4, Bastion.

Others, which rely on steam for copy protection insist on starting steam if you run the exe. (for example civ5)

I guess you have to then ask yourself which works best

a) No copy protection and free for all to pirate the latest version just by copying the game directory out of steamapps.

Copy protection in the form of a key which requires activation and possibly calling home each time.

c) Copy protection via steam logon.

Personally I find c easiest, but I will admit I don;t like being dependant on steam servers continuing to run.

(Fortunately there are ways around this *whistles innocently*)