> You can't really avoid a long running process for a game launcher though

I disagree. I get that steam has useful features I want while in-game (e.g. invite a friend to play), but there's no reason it couldn't just run this launcher only when a steam game is running and immediately exit once it's done.

Also, I think a lot of people forget how small well written software can be -- we're talking like single or double digit megabytes. Heck there's a whole linux distro that's under 20mb.