I emailed Flayra asked about a key for testing and he happily sent one and I've pm'd it to you. For the time being Steam needs to be installed and running for NS2 to launch. NS2 doesn't need to be launched through steam, just needs it to be running. This will change as the actual alpha and beta releases come and Steamworks is incorporated. I'm gonna link to this thread on the NS forums and try to get some of the ppl to post here with what has worked for them and which OS they're using.
