Install Steam game without owning them? (Dont expect to play them)

You can not install games you don't own unless they are free. Trying to run an install for a game you lack just throws up an error.

Well, you can search for Steam-Rip's. But for your original question answer is no.

No, you need to own a game to download it.

Not sure how that works but maybe sharing a family with a person who has them can help you with it.

I think you can access the bindings by adding the game as a non-steam game and naming the non-steam game as the appid of the game. This works for Steam input at least.

For example, let's say I want to access the Steam community bindings for GTAV. First I can take anything and add it as a non-Steam game (most likely you'd be adding a non-Steam version of GTAV you own), then in the steam library list, right click the game and go to properties. Then I would change the name of it to 271590 (GTAV's steam app id). Now if I look for 271590 in my library and go into community bindings, I should see the Steam community bindings for it. Once you select the binding you like you can go back and change the name of the non-steam game.

The other way steam matches bindings is by the name, but that doesn't let you access the binding added through steam versions of the game, rather it simply lets you access binding where someone named a non-steam game the exact same way as you. That works usually works well with games that are not on Steam at all.

I've never done this for VR though, but I assume it would work the same.

What happens if you click on 'Install game' on SteamDB, when you don't own the game? I'm just asking, because I never dared to do it xD

buy it -> download -> refund

You could post on the workshop page asking if the creator would be open to sharing with you directly or see if the mod is also on Nexus or some other mod site. It probably won’t be as seamless to use the mod as things are with the Workshop, but if you get the mod files and can get them working with your Epic version (or wherever else) it should more or less be what you’re looking for.

I haven't seen them lately, but steam used to have free weekends for some games, where you could download and play a game for 3-4 days, after the weekend ended you could no longer start the game,

As long its not early access, you have up to 2 hours of play on any Steam game to refund, no?