The EU law had one effect: removing the grey areas about consent. Before, people could tell they never gave their consent for any bit of information that was gathered.
It is no longer the case due to the EU law. Every bit of information collected is consented.
Personal data are data attached to a person. Usually, information is farmed by IP. IP is attached to a location that is attached to an account that is attached to a person.
Personal data collection are non essential and hard to achieve without people surrending them. It is possible to infer from IP data collected what person did what and when.
Nevertheless, it is not the point of data collection. Steam has little to no interest to personal data collection, a lot more to IP attached data collection.
You have really no idea of what you are talking about, right? Steam, GOG, or Epic are no Youtube , Facebook or whatever you use as a recreation tool lately.
They have with you a personal service contract, you are not an user, you are a customer. They have information about you, where you live, what you play, how you pay, what category of games you buy …
No bullshit data, real data because if you put fake data your contract is essentially void and you lose any kind of right you think you have on your games.
Sure you consent to give your data, you are paying for a service which requires personal data: Payment (which is an explicit consent), your full and complete identity, your real address. They have to comply with your local laws for the contract terms, the financial, the kind of content which is permissible for you.
You are a customer, not an user, if you fake those data they can use this to void the contract and you could potentially be sued.
GDPR is not here to prevent you giving that data or for them to take it. This data is necessary for this kind of service and commercial contract. GDPR is here to make sure you, as a person, keep a control on it and you know what they do with it if you wish so.
Those guys have the wet dream kind of data Google and Facebook are trying to farm for years on top of the data they farm by the usage of their services. FB will launch soon a eMoney to farm your bank account data.
To say than they prefer IP linked data instead of personal data is so wrong..