Steam's Offline Mode

I can't seem to play any of my games in offline mode. For example ME2 and DKS.

yesterday I lost internet connection but none of these games will start in offline mode.

Do I have to be online all the time? I though once the game is fully downloaded and you have played it once while online then you can play them offline?

What am I missing?

Hm, there is an FAQ entry on steam regarding the "offline mode" and how to achieve it … Have you read it through ?

I haven't quite understood it so far either.

From my (limited) experience - you can only start in offline mode if you were already in offline mode when you shut down Steam before, or you selected to restart in offline mode after starting Steam in …online mode. Make sense? I had a case when I had no connection and I could play *nothing* because I could not get online to go offline. That's insanely frustrating. Although I may be be missing some trick.

offline mode is full of bugs and is far from being done. Valve doesn't seem to be interested in fixing it. If you're buying games on Steam be prepared to be unable to play them every time you're out of internet connection.

Er… Steam has an offline mode?

I tried the Steam offline mode once. I wanted to play New Vegas offline, so being online I clicked I wanted to go offline. Steam forgot about ALL my games and I had to reinstall the client. Haven't touched the offline mode since.

Wow … I have never had an issue with offline mode. Though I tend to quit Steam when not actively using it, so when I start a game it starts Steam, an asks 'Start in Offline Mode' if I am not connected to WiFi.

I usually have it online, but the few times innternet was down, it worked like Taxa described. That was with Risen and DA:O, IIRC.

Always in offline mode on my windows PC. Pretty much works as advertised.

Steam is a sad joke on the Mac though. since the latest updates it hangs on exiting
(needing a kill from the console or activity monitor and sometimes deleting the
clientregistry.blob to restart). Also the Eschalon books will not start anymore (many
people have that in several games).

No reply from valve on the issues for a week or so…

Originally Posted by JonNik
Steam is a sad joke on the Mac though. since the latest updates it hangs on exiting
(needing a kill from the console or activity monitor and sometimes deleting the
clientregistry.blob to restart). Also the Eschalon books will not start anymore (many
people have that in several games).

Is that a common issue? I ask because I find Steam is quicker to start and quit and get around in on my i7 Mac than my i7 PC … and haven't had a single crash.

Originally Posted by txa1265
Is that a common issue?

Only since the last update:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum….php?t=1995394

lots of issues generally:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum…play.php?f=891

Personally I found it heavy and glitch prone on my 13 inch macbook. Also offline mode
was problematic sometimes (i.e I got braid in the last steam sale, the game would freeze
every few minutes for ~20 secs when in offline mode concistently, the issue went away
when switching to online mode. This was resolved in the last update though).

I have lots of annoying issues with Steam in both modes.

Primarily, I'm really annoyed with how slow it loads and how many times I have to click to play certain games. I also suffer from "launching game for the first time" or "installing xxx…" every time I click on a game that I've launched many times before.

Just getting the client to launch can be an issue sometimes, as the "splash screen" gets in the way and often doesn't display anything but a grey background. Meaning I have to click back and forth between "Store / Library" and some such every other time I try to play a damn game.

I have no idea what's so hard about making such simple functionality work after so many years.

It's not quite iTunes-bad, but it's up there.

Yes, thats right on the money, including the iTunes reference The ridiculous loading time, made worse by constant self-updating really annoy me too, although I am otherwise a happy Steam customer. It seems to have gotten progressivley worse, not sure if thats because of the increasing number of games, or if its just the client that became more bloated. I have taken to starting steam, and then reading forums, or going to the loo, its that slow.

I'm not sure why, but I have none of the problems described here. And I have a lot of games in my Steam library. Admittedly it's been some time since I tried Off Line mode and I may of course be more patient than others when it comes to loading times, but other than that - perhaps I'm just a very nice and lucky guy. And Norwegian.

Says pibbur who also has no significant problems with iTunes and who also realizes that maybe says more about him than said aPple pOS (piece of software).

Obviously, Norwegians are so spoiled they don't even have IT issues

Oh, we do have IT problems. I remember once, back in '84 when a diskette didn't work after I dropped it into a box of paint…..

Originally Posted by pibbur
Oh, we do have IT problems. I remember once, back in '84 when a diskette didn't work after I dropped it into a box of paint…..

But only after opening it and pulling out the floppy part, right?

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
But only after opening it and pulling out the floppy part, right?

As soon as I got it into my hi-tech dust free room.

Originally Posted by pibbur
As soon as I got it into my hi-tech dust free room.

Located in a beautiful mansion smack in the middle of the best nature can offer?

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Located in a beautiful mansion smack in the middle of the best nature can offer?

Ahh. You've seen the pictures.