nope you don't need the steam version, I started with steam & have now switched to the non steam version as I have different installs for different car types & you can't do that with the steam version, so you end up either having to delete & install the mods you want or have a bloated SCE folder that takes ages to boot up, if you keep having mis-match errors after you use sync, try removing those files into a backup folder the use sync again, hopefully that should work, if that works you can then delete those files from the backup folder.
![Luca [OT]](/data/avatars/s/3235/3235113.jpg?1697196734){kind=avatar}