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General discussion (archive)Steam "offline mode" not really offline anymore?(427 posts)(427 posts)
(427 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 24, 2013
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keeveek: To all people arguing here - really NOONE has an old, unneeded PC that is not connected to the internet to test if the offline mode for weeks or months?
Well, not exactly, but I use a laptop and it would be very easy for me to turn off wireless every time I play a game and see what happens.

Also, I use a Macbook and looking at the activity monitor, it appears no Steam processes run unless I open the client. Once the client is closed, the processes are ended. So it does not appear any background service is running which would contact the Steam servers while wireless is on.

I am a Steam novice as I just created an account earlier this week for Europa Universalis 3. I have no prior experience on how the client works, offline mode, etc. But I'll try the above and see what happens.
Posted July 26, 2013
Today I made a Youtube channel to try out the RotT contest GOG is running. After checking back here to see if OldFatGuy ever updated what happened, I did the same tests from when I heard of the two week limit and recorded them to see how uploading videos went.

These are far from professional, as indicated by the Bandicam logo at the top, but it shows the results. When you boot Windows in VMWare, it sets the date to match your host machine. So I couldn't change the date from the VM BIOS. Instead I use the task manager to make sure Steam fully shuts down before messing with the date.

The first video disables the LAN and tests offline mode at 7, 13 and 14 days. When you hit 14 days it locks you out until you have a network connection to re-authorize.

http://youtu.be/J_Wh4xOuANw

In the second video I installed a firewall called Net Peeker that has pop up notifications when a program tries to access the internet. After placing Steam into offline mode, turning on the firewall, and moving the date forward 14 days it tries connecting to Valve servers. If you deny the connections it won't let you into Steam. If you allow them it re-authorizes with Valve and then continues loading into offline mode.

http://youtu.be/dF6HiFqP28Q

So as is you can stay in "offline" mode, but if Steam can't check back it won't load anymore after two weeks unless it can get a connection again.


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isis12: By the way, has anyone figured out what exactly to block with the firewall to cut the connection to Steam? I have tried all kinds of things, steam.exe, steamservice, steamerrorreporter et al, it still sends data. Only blocking internet traffic entirely works. But that's a bit too much even for me.
Here are the IPs that steam.exe tried connecting to when I tested that.
208.64.200.189:27030
208.64.200.191:27030
208.78.164.7:27038
208.64.200.190:27030
63.228.223.110:80
68.142.118.254:80

and steamerrorreporter.exe tried connecting to 208.64.203.140:80

The port 27030 and 27038 seem to be the authorization ones. Try setting a universal rule blocking them and it may work. I don't know if there are any other ones it tires eventually if those aren't available though.
Posted July 27, 2013
Great test Fictionvision, thank you for that. I guess that pretty much settles how offline mode works. Or rather doesn't in the way one would expect. Which is pretty much my problem with the whole thing. If something is called "always online" it may keep me from using it, but it's certainly a decision I can respect. But calling something "offline mode" and then secretly still being online is simply dishonest.

Another thing I find interesting is that you still get the "Steam is currently set to be in Offline Mode" disclaimer when you start it up. I used to get that too, but since one of the latest updates Steam starts without that for me. Which sounds as if Valve pushes different versions of the client to different people. I guess they analyze our usage patterns with those different designs to see whether, say, showing this disclaimer annoys people enough to nudge them towards putting the client online or not. Pretty much how Amazon or other data driven websites make their design decisions.
That would in fact also explain how it's possible that some people claim that they used offline mode for longer than 2 weeks. In most cases I suspect their PC was online and they just didn't know that Steam connects even in offline mode, but it may also be the case that some versions of the client allow for longer offline periods than others.


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Fictionvision: Here are the IPs that steam.exe tried connecting to when I tested that.
208.64.200.189:27030
208.64.200.191:27030
208.78.164.7:27038
208.64.200.190:27030
63.228.223.110:80
68.142.118.254:80

and steamerrorreporter.exe tried connecting to 208.64.203.140:80

The port 27030 and 27038 seem to be the authorization ones. Try setting a universal rule blocking them and it may work. I don't know if there are any other ones it tires eventually if those aren't available though.
Great, I'll try blocking all those and see if it works.
Posted July 27, 2013
Alright, some more testing done and I'm pretty much satisfied now.

I had already blocked:
steam.exe
steamerrorreporter.exe
steamerrorreporter64.exe
x64launcher.exe
steamservice.exe

On Fictionvisions advise I've added:
208.64.200.189
208.64.200.191
208.78.164.7
208.64.200.190
208.64.203.140
63.228.223.110
68.142.118.254

I then used Wireshark to capture any traffic and launched Steam in offline mode.
It was pretty quiet but there were still apparently other IPs:
87.248.217.253
87.248.217.254

Added those and now communication has stopped as far as I can tell.

I then replicated Fictionvisions test and time-travelled 2 weeks into the future with the same result: If the Steam client can not secretly re-authenticate for 2 weeks it stops working.

TLDR
If you want to put Steam truly offline block all those executables and IPs above. Every 2 weeks you have to disable these rules before you start the client. It stops working otherwise.
Posted July 27, 2013
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isis12: I don't use Steam much and have always kept it in offline mode which worked fine so far. Yesterday I put it online for the first time in months to install a new game. As always, there was some kind of client update. One change that I noticed was that even when I put it back in offline mode, the store and community stuff was still working. Clearly the client was now connected even in offline mode. Since there didn't seem to be an option anymore to truly keep it offline, I just used my firewall to block Steam and to my satisfaction anything but my library section stopped working.

Today, when I start Steam it tells me:
"Steam - Error. Unable to connect to the Steam network. 'Offline Mode' is unavailable because there is no Steam login information stored on this computer. You will not be able to use Steam until you can connect to the Steam network again."

WTF? I never had login information stored because it wasn't neccesary for offline mode and I have no idea why it should be. Does anyone know of any reason for that kind of change, or better yet, how to get around it? Do you have the same problem? Should I just stop using this "service"? (don't answer the last one)

Sorry to ask about this here but I don't use the Steam forum and my chance getting a competent answer is probably better here anyway.
Are you the type who appreciates philosophy?

My theory is that some organization out there, studying human psyche, has provided Steam with a massive quantity of customers in order to study how quickly a small company can lose appreciation for it's customers once it has earned enough to no longer give a crap and also how persistent the general consumerists habits are even when apparent that their patronage is being mocked.
Post edited July 27, 2013 by carnival73
Posted July 27, 2013
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isis12: Alright, some more testing done and I'm pretty much satisfied now.

I had already blocked:
steam.exe
steamerrorreporter.exe
steamerrorreporter64.exe
x64launcher.exe
steamservice.exe

On Fictionvisions advise I've added:
208.64.200.189
208.64.200.191
208.78.164.7
208.64.200.190
208.64.203.140
63.228.223.110
68.142.118.254

I then used Wireshark to capture any traffic and launched Steam in offline mode.
It was pretty quiet but there were still apparently other IPs:
87.248.217.253
87.248.217.254

Added those and now communication has stopped as far as I can tell.

I then replicated Fictionvisions test and time-travelled 2 weeks into the future with the same result: If the Steam client can not secretly re-authenticate for 2 weeks it stops working.

TLDR
If you want to put Steam truly offline block all those executables and IPs above. Every 2 weeks you have to disable these rules before you start the client. It stops working otherwise.
So there's no getting around the 2 week offline limit? Or does blocking all of that stuff allow Steam to be used past that limit?
Posted July 27, 2013
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haydenaurion: So there's no getting around the 2 week offline limit? Or does blocking all of that stuff allow Steam to be used past that limit?
No, apparently Steam needs to re-authenticate at least every 2 weeks. Even if you put the client into offline mode, it will still contact Valve every time you start it up as long as you have an internet connection, i.e. even in offline mode the client is online.

As soon as you don't have an internet connection or use your firewall to block Steam that secret connection obviously stops working, hence after 2 weeks the client won't start up anymore.

One thing that might work is to just reset your Windows clock every day so that the client thinks it's authenticated indefinitely. Could be worth a try if you are entirely without internet for longer than 2 weeks but nothing I would normally want to do. My goal with this is mostly to prevent the data tracking, which I dont like on principle, so as long as usage data isn't stored locally, connecting every 2 weeks isn't much of a problem for me. Which isn't to say that I appreciate being misled by fake features. But nothing to get worked up about, eh?
Posted July 27, 2013
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haydenaurion: So there's no getting around the 2 week offline limit? Or does blocking all of that stuff allow Steam to be used past that limit?
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isis12: No, apparently Steam needs to re-authenticate at least every 2 weeks. Even if you put the client into offline mode, it will still contact Valve every time you start it up as long as you have an internet connection, i.e. even in offline mode the client is online.

As soon as you don't have an internet connection or use your firewall to block Steam that secret connection obviously stops working, hence after 2 weeks the client won't start up anymore.

One thing that might work is to just reset your Windows clock every day so that the client thinks it's authenticated indefinitely. Could be worth a try if you are entirely without internet for longer than 2 weeks but nothing I would normally want to do. My goal with this is mostly to prevent the data tracking, which I dont like on principle, so as long as usage data isn't stored locally, connecting every 2 weeks isn't much of a problem for me. Which isn't to say that I appreciate being misled by fake features. But nothing to get worked up about, eh?
And how do you know that usage data are not stored locally and sent to Steam server upon connecting? Apple and Google are already doing that, so its not that far fetched.
BTW good job for all you guys spending that time testing the "offline" mode and hopefully this will be helpful for others who can be mislead with the label of the mode.
Posted July 27, 2013
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SpikyGOG: ...and when you say something bad about steam here, you instantly get -1, nevermind.
You must be new here.
Posted July 27, 2013
So according to the above tests I wasn't going crazy... ^_^
Posted July 28, 2013
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kaileeena: And how do you know that usage data are not stored locally and sent to Steam server upon connecting?
I don't to be honest. It's just an educated guess based on the fact that even the most simple stats like "X minutes played" don't work in offline mode. If they did store this information locally that wouldn't make much sense. Unless that's just another sneaky nudge to get people who like this functionality to stay online. Which sounds plausible come to think of it.
Oh well, blocking as much as possible certainly doesn't make the tracking worse so I might as well give it my best shot. But if you or anyone else has more information on whether or not usage data is stored locally I'd be happy to hear it.
Posted July 31, 2013
Haven’t tried the virtual machine trick myself. What i know however, is that once i disconnect to the internet, all my steam games won’t work.
I can see the game running in the task manager but that’s all i get.
Fast forward three days later, at a very inappropriate time, and i finally connect to my wifi, and within 5 seconds, the game launches.
Posted July 31, 2013
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zer00o: Haven’t tried the virtual machine trick myself. What i know however, is that once i disconnect to the internet, all my steam games won’t work.
I can see the game running in the task manager but that’s all i get.
Fast forward three days later, at a very inappropriate time, and i finally connect to my wifi, and within 5 seconds, the game launches.
It's very hit or miss. You do have to set it up correctly before you disconnect, then hopefully it works. I've had inconsistent luck with it in the past.
Posted August 04, 2013
It didn't work this weekend for me. Had a vacation with spotty internet access. I went into offline mode and then shutdown. When I got to my vacation spot, turned it on, tried to launch civ4 and of course it wants to go back on line. After a day of overcast skies I was able to get LTE hotspot to work enough to let steam check in and go offline again.
In between that time, I did fire it up with internet access. Perhaps when it sees a connection it automatically logs you back online now. Caused me one boring day of watching How it's made marathon on TV. Some of my family has very bad taste in TV shows, Reality TV and how it's made, I was hoping for death.
For those curious, Duck Dynasty marathon also played, thankfully I was in civ4 bliss by then.
Post edited August 04, 2013 by jjsimp
Posted August 20, 2013
So, on a plane a couple days ago, and of course I was no longer in offline mode again. I am now convinced offline mode is broken. Is there a no-steam.exe for civ4? It is the only game on steam I still play.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)Steam "offline mode" not really offline anymore?(427 posts)(427 posts)
(427 posts)