Easiest method to let us pre-load on Steam

Just release the game on steam few hours before the launch and keep the servers closed til the grand opening time. You literally do the same thing for consoles, they are able to download and get to login screen right now, they just can't login of course due to servers being closed.

At this point, you can't excuse "data mining" since you are allowing us to download standalone client in few hours anyways. Why not just do it for the steam as well? Why is this so hard to do?

What am I missing here?

This sounds way too easy to miss. Since GGG is not doing that (if they are not doing that), there might be contractual obligations to have an "active" server available for an online game "release".

Would that make sense?

p.s. Come on. We do not have anything better to do. Game on :)

One of the worst things with game launches is dealing with asinine unpacking software designs because they let you pre-download it .. but then encrypt the heck out of it.

It's faster to just redownload the game than let it go through that whole process.