Seriously Steam...

[suitepee7]

all you need to do is switch to offline mode once, and it should save your client settings. if not, delete the client file, then do it, and it will work. mine does anyway

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

It's not that bad a system. It's only preventing you from playing if the internet is going to be down when you don't know about it. That's one scenario. In your case steam isn't stopping you, it's just 1) you didn't prepare for the internet to be down by switching to offline mode beforehand and 2) you have to move your computer to connect it to the internet temporarily.

If you're so used to playing offline one wonders why you were online at all. Was it perchance to take advantage of the steam sales?

Yeah. Anyone who goes on, say, a cabin trip and wants to play Steam games on their laptop during the trip should obviously turn on Offline Mode when they're at home, then bring the laptop with them and not turn the laptop off for the next week. I mean, that's entirely reasonable, right?

Why would you go on a cabin trip just to sit inside and play video games the whole time!? Go outside, man!

I'd rather not go outside when it's pouring down, so it's nice to be able to play something if the weather turns to shit and we go tired of board games. Or we might want to do some rounds of Worms in the evening for family time(which is GREAT family time, by the way ).

Except we can't, because there's no offline mode now that we actually need one.

That blows though. I keep hearing of people having this problem but I've never had it personally. My games play offline just fine. Of course, I remember having to go six months without access to the majority of my Steam games just because a patch to the client caused every game to crash on load. So I've had my issues in the past as well.

 

[Johnson McGee]

What you can do to get steam to launch in offline mode at any time is first, enable the offline mode, then do a backup of the two .blob files in the steam directory. Any time you want to go on offline mode without triggering it online first you can restore the .blobs from the backup and it will work.

But you have to update the backups any time you buy or install a new game though.

 

[Brandon Logan]

I use to be able to start it offline. In the last week that changed. I don`t have a stable internet connection so it was good....

Now I need to go online then offline to even play Borderlands single player.

 

[legendp]

When steam failed to connect online, it used to ask if you'd like to start in offline mode.

Due to reasons, they got rid of it. either because of hacking (using a third party to run through steam to download any game on steam. A real thing.) or account theft/piracy (In offline mode, you can play other accounts games, even if they're logged on.) So now you have to verify it by logging in, then going offline. Which I guess doesn't help a whole lot, but..you know...whatever.

Anyway, you can still start steam in offline mode, it's just a little more advanced now than it was before.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2641233

The games were getting pirated anyway, making it harder just makes it a bigger challenge for the crackers. so they get even more glory when they succeed. take a look at which version of the Witcher 2 was pirated first, it was not the GOG version even though that would have been extremely easy, it was the DRM version with securom that was pirated first (more glory). More and tighter DRM does not work to prevent pirates, if anything it just encourages them, and then converts more annoyed customers into piraters because they can no longer play there games offline.

I have encounted the same issue and I hate that steam is doing this, I bought I lot of steam sale games, But I may have to download pirated versions of the singleplayer games because I am fed up with "can not go offline at this time". it's why I am now looking at GOG a lot moe (got both witcher 1 and 2 for $17). I really hope steam fixes this problem. I use a laptop a lot and use mutiple OS's. Having to be online to go inot offline mode is just stupid.

my only hope then is that I can pair my phone with my laptop an get a faint signal to log into steam (I have 5GB every 45 days so bandwidth for me is not a problem, but it's an inconvenience and any people don't get the luxury of such a good deal)

 

[Zer_]

Sorry lads and but I'm in need of a good rant bare with me here. or if u want bear with me..rawwrrr *ahem*

I don't normally do this but bear with me means to put up with ne. Bare with me means, well, you can probably work that out.

Steams DRM is something I can bear with, but it is a shame you have to select offline mode pre-emptively.

It makes perfect sense to ensure Offline Mode works before the eventuality could arise where you would need it. That's called thinking ahead. No sympathy from me here.

 

[Rack]

Sorry lads and but I'm in need of a good rant bare with me here. or if u want bear with me..rawwrrr *ahem*

I don't normally do this but bear with me means to put up with ne. Bare with me means, well, you can probably work that out.

Steams DRM is something I can bear with, but it is a shame you have to select offline mode pre-emptively.

It makes perfect sense to ensure Offline Mode works before the eventuality could arise where you would need it. That's called thinking ahead. No sympathy from me here.

Assuming you always know when you'll have an Internet shortage that is. I've never been caught out when I've been expecting long periods without Internet access but it has been problematic with shorter unexpected periods.