Steam Question

T

Toff

Guest
To play a game from them, do I need to be connected to the Internet? I looked on their site but the answer its not clear.

I can download whatever from work but at home I have never bothered with a connection.
 
Toff said:
To play a game from them, do I need to be connected to the Internet? I looked on their site but the answer its not clear.

I can download whatever from work but at home I have never bothered with a connection.
Click to expand...

You can play games in "offline mode" - but you need to be online for patches and a lot of the functionality. Also, if you buy a Steam key, you obviously need to be online to apply it and download the game.
 
In practice most games have to be started up once while you're online. After that you can switch to offline mode.
 
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Ok, thanks all. I may just try it with a cheap game to see.

Getting the game isn't a problem, I just won't be on a connection at home when I go to play it.
 
I'd say if you have a laptop and load Steam on it and then download the games while you're at work, then you should be good. Just take the laptop back to work every so often for updates. Just set it from online to offline when you go home. If it's two seperate pcs, it's still doable but more of a pain.
 
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Did steam go the same route that GoG did and make the look of their site lame? I don't often look at steam before going offline, but it really looks different now, super ugly different.
 
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Yes, they added some functionality and made the look more ugly modern.
 
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Because cell phones and tablets are taking over. A comfortable mouse interface is no longer important.
 
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Gorath said:
Because cell phones and tablets are taking over. A comfortable mouse interface is no longer important.
Click to expand...

That... and the stupid big screen mode so people with Valve consoles Steam boxes can access stuff easier from the comfort of their couch with the soon-to-be-released Steam controller.
 
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Are cell phones really that powerful these days? I had one maybe ten years ago, and even now I'd find it hard to believe a phone could play some of the games that my computer can. Even if they could, who'd want to play on a tiny screen, lol. Just sounds weird to me.
 
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Cell phones are pretty badass these days but they are still way behind a computer in terms of power. I was hoping for more from cellphones game wise but it's kinda nice having a little computer in your pocket. I like my cellphone more than my computer.
 
Offline play used to be hit and miss, but it has really improved lately. It seemed like it used to want to "phone home" occasionally even when set to offline mode, and wouldn't work until it you connected online again then set it back to offline. That happened to my son while he was in the Navy out on a ship with no access to Internet for a few months, just out of the blue it decided it needed to connect again.

One thing that has really improved is that before you had to set it to offline mode while you were online to get it to work reliably. The other day my Internet connection was out and it asked on start up, so that was a welcome change.
 
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