Topic: Well, if nothing else, at least Steam's offline mode has improved.

[Pugnate]

In the past, whenever my net has been down, Steam has refused to load up. This morning my net was down for about six hours, and on a whim I tried to turn on Steam after the latest update. After informing me that it couldn't connect to the net, to my surprise, it loaded up just fine in offline mode.

I then proceeded to play a few hours of games, without issue.

Steam is far from perfect, but at least it has improved on a major gripe of mine. Now if only Valve would give an option of shipping retail boxes with every purchase.

[Xessive]

Or at least drop the prices on download-only purchases.

[MysterD]

I've been lucky -- once my game has been activated, I have never had any real trouble w/ offline mode.

When Steam's servers were a bit ago down for maintenance, the day after I got L4D, L4D's offline mode for Single Player worked just fine.

I've never used Steam's back-up utility, but I usually just back up the Steam GCF's and the actual game folder (if there's anything in there; usually is for 3rd Party games). How is Steam's back-up utility?

Steam is far from perfect, but at least it has improved on a major gripe of mine. Now if only Valve would give an option of shipping retail boxes with every purchase.

That would be great. But, if there's a game update and you already have it -- and the game's been updated more times than you can shake a stick at and/or has gotten HUGE updates, you might wanna back the whole game up (so you ain't gotta re-DL the updates).

Hell, NBA 2K9 PC recently had a 1.5 GB freakin' patch over Steam! Why so big? That's b/c PC version got its first update -- which basically included all the new additional animations, dunks, roster changes, new players, improved AI, and etc that the X360 been getting through for Living Breathing Updates that occur every day; so of course the PC patch was gonna be huge!

[scottws]

I've never had luck with the offline mode.  It really pissed me off once when I moved and couldn't play HL2 until my Internet connection got set up.

[MysterD]

I've never had luck with the offline mode.  It really pissed me off once when I moved and couldn't play HL2 until my Internet connection got set up.

That's crap. Yeah, that problem still exists for some.

If you are still having trouble with it, read this FAQ about Offline Mode Issues.

Hopefully, your solution's in there.

Hopefully, it's as simple as opening a few ports (which my firewall closed-up, for some reason) -- which I had to do to get G4WL re-going again.

[Quemaqua]

Steam is a piece of shit.  The fact that the offline mode has ever given anyone any problems is an utter travesty.

[W7RE]

Is offline mode a hit or miss type situation? I assumed it always worked fine. Right when HL2 came out I was playing it on my brother's account from Arizona. I installed it, then I would just disconnect from the net before running the game and it would run in offline mode. That way I wasn't trying to log into my bro's account while he might be on it. I never had a problem.

[Quemaqua]

Lots of people have.  I used to use Steam on a laptop where I was often away from a connection, and it didn't work far more often than it did.

I played through the entirety of HL2 on that thing.  Man, that brings back memories.

[Pugnate]

What sort of issues have you guys had with offline mode?
I just realized that about three months ago, I set Steam to start in perma-offline mode on my sister's comp, so that she could play Audiosurf, which she has been playing it quite easily.

[scottws]

Basically, it just would say I had to log in.  If I typed in my correct credentials, it just said something like it can't contact the Steam servers.  I was not able to play a single player game for more than a week until I finally got an Internet connection.

It's been hit or miss since.  Mostly miss.

[Pugnate]

In the past few years I've had the same frustrations as you with this, though with the updates it seems to have improved dramatically -- at least for me -- recently.

[Quemaqua]

I got some kind of error where it said something didn't work correctly and it needed to log in again to re-verify or something.  There were a couple errors, but that one was the most infuriating.  "You need to go online so we can make sure you can play in offline mode".  Arg.  Even more infuriating because it would be working in offline mode okay, then suddenly stop for no reason at all and tell me I had to go online.

[Cobra951]

My attitude is unchanged.  Requiring online verification of anything to use what I've bought is a deal breaker.  As long as there's any other way to get what I want, I won't submit to it.  Steam is only the most prominent example.  I am an equal opportunity intrusion hater.

[Xessive]

I wasn't overly concerned about it until I had no internet for about a week. Same as Scott, it would just constantly ask to login and connect with no option to go into Offline mode. This was about a month ago, so it is fairly recent.

Sometime last week the net was down for maintenance (again), and my brother and I decided to run through some coop on L4D, and lo and behold it actually gave us the option to go into offline mode (which supports LAN).

It does seem like a hit/miss kind of situation which can be unnerving.

I'm with Cobra and Que on this; being at Valve's mercy to play something I paid for is bullshit.

[W7RE]

I dunno, I guess I've just been lucky. I just unplugged my ethernet cord and ran Steam, it said it couldn't connect and it gave me the option to run in offline mode. I played some Bioshock and solo Quake Wars. It did the exact same thing 4 years ago when I was playing Half-Life 2 in offline mode.

[Pugnate]

Yea I guess I have been fortunate as well. While I have had loads of problems in the past, the latest updates seem to have improved things for me.

Or at least drop the prices on download-only purchases.

Well, on that front, the Steam games prices are controlled by the respective publishers. While they do pay a fee to Valve, it is still less than what they pay brick and mortar stores.

The only prices Valve fully controls are of its own games... and they do provide good discounts every few months or so. And the Orange Box was a really really good deal.

I asked the price question on the Valve forums a while back, and all this was explained to me then. Apparently publishers that sell their games on Steam don't want lower prices than at retail, because it would sour their relationship with the brick and mortars.

Of course with those becoming less significant -- especially with the recession --, that could change in the future, provided a service like impulse takes off.

[scottws]

I think one thing that kind of bothers me about downloadable games:  there is no stock to clear out.  There is less of an incentive to lower prices.

[idolminds]

And the opposite of that, games never going out of print, needs to be a little more retroactive. Why Steam and other services haven't been absolutely flooded with old games baffles me. Good Old Games has the right idea, but they are slowed trying to strike deals with these companies. Why don't they jump on this stuff? Some of these companies are sitting on a goldmine and they don't even know it.

[Pugnate]

And the opposite of that, games never going out of print, needs to be a little more retroactive. Why Steam and other services haven't been absolutely flooded with old games baffles me. Good Old Games has the right idea, but they are slowed trying to strike deals with these companies. Why don't they jump on this stuff? Some of these companies are sitting on a goldmine and they don't even know it.

I guess they don't see a market for it, perhaps. Since the games are old and classics, I guess the thinking is that people who want them already have them one way, or the other.

Then again, with these games such tiny downloads, it wouldn't cost them much to try, eh? I guess the other issue is that it would take them some work to make sure these run on the modern OS' of today. The question is if that work would pay off.

You know, if PS:T, Baldur's Gate etc., were on Steam for a few dollars, I'd buy them again.

[idolminds]

With netbooks being hugely popular, now is the perfect time to sell those older games that will run on them. Tiny size is perfect for the small solid state drives in many of the systems. I look at the mobile market at their game pricing...$5 or less. The games have zero dev costs (already made). Even if you only sold 1,000 copies at $5, thats $5,000 more than you'd be making by just letting it sit. Multiply that by the number of old games and properties some of these companies own (EA especially) and you've got some considerable money coming in for stuff thats already been made.

Getting them to work on modern OS' would be nice, and thats what GoG does. Personally I'd still buy them even if they weren't specifically ported. I've always wanted to play Interstate 76...just let me buy it!

Just seems silly. Abandonware sites are just giving this stuff away because you can't buy them anywhere.

Ok...enough of this totally OT rant, heh.

[MysterD]

And the opposite of that, games never going out of print, needs to be a little more retroactive. Why Steam and other services haven't been absolutely flooded with old games baffles me. Good Old Games has the right idea, but they are slowed trying to strike deals with these companies. Why don't they jump on this stuff? Some of these companies are sitting on a goldmine and they don't even know it.

I think the reason some companies won't join the GOG Club is b/c their GOG requirement includes the company giving them the final master copy of the game without DRM period. Though, what's nice about the GOG Club is that CD Projekt themselves plays w/ the files and gets the games running on modern systems -- and cranks out extras, rips the soundtrack themselves into MP3 files; etc etc.

The thing is, I doubt Valve will support the old games themselves like say CD Projekt is doing with GOG. If an old school game gets put on Steam, the publisher and/or dev's that put the game up might have actually start supporting the damn game again -- if they want to sell some digital copies. I mean, some of these games -- like those old Infinity Engine games such as BG series, Icewind Dale series and PST -- you got to turn OFF your video card's hardware acceleration for them to actually run right. If you don't turn that off, that framerate will be all over the place; all kind of graphical freezes might occur (especially when spells are casted); CTD's; etc etc. Infinity Engine is NOT kind to modern systems -- unless hardware acceleration on your video card's off. I could imagine some issues some of these games might run into b/c of their age if not updated at all.

[Quemaqua]

So I go to uninstall a game today, and guess what?  I have to update Steam first!  The update fucks up somehow, so I have to do it again, and then Steam won't log me in.  Finally get that sorted, and I can uninstall my game.  I love you, Valve!

[Xessive]

The exact same thing happened to me today. I rebooted and ran Steam again and it seemed to work.

[Quemaqua]

I just love the fact that Steam has to *update* so I can *uninstall* a game.  What the fuck?  Go to hell, Valve.  And fuck yourselves on the way.

[MysterD]

I just love the fact that Steam has to *update* so I can *uninstall* a game.  What the fuck?  Go to hell, Valve.  And fuck yourselves on the way.

Ahhh, the (in)convenience that is Steam...

[MysterD]

Bluesnews -> Valve says "Offline Mode is designed to be Indefinite."

A response from Valve to a thread about offline mode on Steam indicates that the way offline mode currently requires users to go online periodically to allow them to play their Steam games without being connected to the Internet is a bug, and not working as intended. He does not offer a timeframe for when this might be fixed, but clearly states the requirement to go online once your game is authenticated is a "bug" (thanks Creston). Here's word:

This is not actually true - Offline Mode is designed to be indefinite. You can't access any of Steam's online features such as friends lists or saved game synchronization, of course, but the client should allow you to run in Offline Mode for as long as you like.

That said, there are many components involved in Offline Mode, and some of them have known issues and bugs which we are continually working to improve. We're aware that it doesn't always work as flawlessly as we want it to, but please keep reporting bugs with Offline Mode. It is not broken 'by design'.

Valve Forums -> And Valve says they been working to make offline mode more robust.

We have been working very hard on upgrading the underlying technology in Steam. We have no community managers or PR people, so all the time that we spend on forums is taking away from development time. That said, I know that it's frustrating to get no response, and it looks like we aren't doing anything about it.

Many of the older games on Steam were using an older authentication system which has many known issues with Offline Mode and is incredibly difficult to maintain - it was written for a time when there were dozens of games on Steam, not thousands. We are in the process of upgrading every game in the Steam catalog to a newer authentication system (and fixing bugs that result from the conversion), but this is a slow and time-consuming process. Some day soon, once this work is completed, we will eliminate the old authentication system (represented by the ClientRegistry.blob file) and Offline Mode should immediately become much more robust.

EDIT:
Definitely worth documenting this, in case some people around still have problems w/ Steam's offline mode and whatnot....
Here's an interesting post on Valve forums, in that same thread - on how to force offline mode.
This tweak could help some people, who indeed might have problems w/ running Steam games in offline mode for whatever reason.

swenor Jun 27 @ 6:51am

I found this somewhere in the forums:

yes all you have to do is go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam when you are in steam then click your right mouse button and new text document when you are there you'll paste this

BootStrapperInhibitAll=enable
ForceOfflineMode=enable

be sure to name that text document steam.cfg

hope it helps you atleast it works for me

I can confirm it works. Test it first to avoid issues (just in case).
If you keep that steam.cfg in your steam installation directory then steam will always log in automatically in offline mode. If you remove/rename that file Steam will show login box.

Last edited by swenor; Jun 27 @ 6:52am

[idolminds]

the way offline mode currently requires users to go online periodically to allow them to play their Steam games without being connected to the Internet is a bug, and not working as intended. He does not offer a timeframe for when this might be fixed

I like the part where this "bug" has basically existed since Steam launched a decade ago.

[Cobra951]

At least the 4 years since the thread was last bumped, clearly.  I'll take them at their word that it was too much of a fustercluck to fix, and a whole new system is needed.  Hopefully, now it will get solved.

[MysterD]

At least the 4 years since the thread was last bumped, clearly.  I'll take them at their word that it was too much of a fustercluck to fix, and a whole new system is needed.  Hopefully, now it will get solved.

They've changed their file-format recent, too - a lot of their games, you had to convert to a NEW system, since they got rid of the NCF and GCF system.
No more EXE's on installer back-ups, either.

Sounds like that BLOB file itself causes a lot of the online/offline problems some have, too.

I wouldn't be surprised if they finally fixing this b/c they are eventually trying to move Steam into living rooms w/ SteamMachines - not everybody doing console gaming likely has a consistent Net connection.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, I won't take them at their word at all. Maybe they've just finally gotten enough pissed off customers that it seems like it's worth changing now.

[Xessive]

This is certainly in line with the Linux move.