Does anyone know a place or places where to request or sign for a proper Offline Mode for the Steam client?

The current Offline Mode is a mess and a joke. I can't believe I can't play my own games when I don't have access to the Internet, even if the client is configured to "Offline" when I have Internet... (>_<)

Haha. I wonder how long that link will stay there, it will be a true test to see how active moderators really are here.

Anyway, people having troubles with offline mode in Steam have any of tried using a firewall to stop it from connecting and shut down the Steam Client service? I use it 'manual' instead of 'automatic', maybe it's a reason offline has never been an issue since they took away that "you need to be online to go offline"-rule.

If you mean the idea that you always needed to be online before you could go offline hat rule never existed, it was a misconception based on the offline mode instructions that indeed says you need to be online to go offline. That was however to explain setting it up, meaning signing in to your account and making sure the remember me box was tagged and those types of things. That does indeed require to be online. But after that first time set up you could go into offline mode without having internet just fine, it was never required beyond that. The problem was that the feature is far from perfect, it broke a lot (one common reason was because shutting Windows down with Steam running broke the shutdown process), and then people started assuming it was required to be online to go offline.

I never installed Steam on another computer than my own and I've always ticked that "remember me" option for convenience sake so I doubt I would stumble upon that issue.

Anyway, so you mean that there are no issues with offline mode? Occam's Razor dicdates that most of the issues are user errors but I doubt all of them are. Then again I find it strange that after a while Steam won't start in offline because it wants to start in online mode, like a forced check-online trigger. If that's the case I think there are ways to find what that trigger is and bypass it somehow.

For single player games the easiest solution is obviously game fixes from places like megagames or gamecopyworld but I suspect some people have some principles against them, they don't dare because of potential viruses or they aren't any for the specific game version one is using.

1 hour. That's pretty quick for a small company on a Sunday when your support is usually closed during the weekend.

How in the world did you get that out of my post? In fact, I even stated the exact opposite and even specifically named one of the known issues.

Sorry, I misread your post.

What I meant to say is, is there an internal issue in Steam that requires to check online that forces people to stop using it until they use Steam with an online connection? Exclude issues like the one in your example if you shut down windows before shutting down the Steam client.

In that case we don't know. There's some speculations, and people who were forced to do it after what seemed like a two week period, but there's also people stating they got past the two weeks just fine. When the question was asked on the support forums it was said that offline mode is not supposed to work that way, that it's supposed to work indefinitely. But it's possible that that statement is true yet not true (offline mode while still having internet vs actually Offline where you don't have internet).

If it is, it should be a recent implementation though since I have seen plenty of people say they managed without having internet for more than several months. But recently it could have changed.

Oh well, that's pretty harsh imho: I just linked the homepage of the Bay, a BitTorrent search engine where you can find a huge amount of free and open source software among other things....

ahh... that makes sense now. You wanted to help Azrael360 finding alternative sources to all the free and open source software which exists on steam. That's nice of you.

Yeah, I also think Sourceforge may be a better source for this.

This really highlights the dangers of using an online DRM system. You really have no control over the games you've purchased and they can do whatever they like, including changing how the DRM works.

I'd have been very upset if I'd joined Steam thinking I could permanently play all my games offline, only to discover this had changed to a two week period. And there's not much I could have done to fight this.

If Steam were to provide an offline activation option, hosted patches that could be downloaded and then installed offline, and removed the need to run the Steam client when playing games, I might give Steam a serious look.

So to all the developers out there insisting on releasing Steam-only games, please push for these options to be implemented so that the rest of us can play your games too. ...or offer your games on GOG.

I don't know what KingofGnG posted, but judging from the posts of everybody else, using The Pirate Bay as a way to download "free" and "open source" games was clearly not what I was asking for, not even close... ("where to request a proper Offline Mode for the Steam client".)

Anyway, I made some tests this morning. My gaming and personal computer has a WiFi connection for the Internet using an USB device. So getting my PC without Internet completely is easy with just unplugging the WiFi device.

So, to simulate a situation where I don't have Internet at all without prior preparation, I unplugged the device and started the Steam client this way (no Offline Mode selected before), and found the error with the "No Internet connection". Selecting "Offline Mode" from this window started succesfully the client, with all the games I have installed, and could play a few of them without problems. Then, I closed the client properly.

Now, "going to the future" for 3 weeks just changing the system's clock (is there another way?), my anti-virus jumped telling me that I haven't updated my database, blah, blah... (LOL). Re-starting the client showed me the same message as before, and selecting "Offline Mode", I had no problems with the installed games, they were there and I could play a few others as well.

Same results going two months into the future.

Now, the only issue I found was that during the "Offline Mode" was active, I couldn't restore any previous backup I've made. I use an external hard drive to keep a backup of all my Steam games I have downloaded in the past (to not download them again), and when this mode is active, the client doesn't let you install any backup. Probably due that it needs to check online if you own the game and any update it may have.

Anyway, I couldn't reproduce the problem where others can't load the client after a while. In my case, if someday I don't have an Internet connection for a while, I guess I'll have to install previously any possible game I will need during that time, or else... (:P)

I just linked the Pirate Bay homepage, and I still mean it: if you want to run off-line (and forever) your Steam-powered games, you need to get a cracked version of 'em. It's your best option, plain and simple. It's not my fault, it's Valve's.