Well, these steam sales I decided to go a bit crazy and bought a bunch of games. Among them, a bundle with 2 Chinese RPGs that I was curious about and wanted to try.

I was quite surprised to get a "connection error" when trying to save the game while playing on offline mode. On an RPG, this means it's essentially unplayable offline. Which is quite unacceptable.

I'm willing to accept Hanlon's razor here and think it's a bug, but it appears that the complaint has been raised before and nobody gave a shit. Whether most users on steam don't care about offline play or not, I think such a soft version of online only DRM should be mentioned in the store page for those of us who do care about it, and it isn't.

So, the point of this post is to beg for upvotes on my negative review of both games. I think they should be high up so they display on the store page and the issue gets some visibility. If I'm lucky, it may motivate the devs to get it fixed.

So yeah, game 1 and game 2.

Why we prefer GOG... Several years ago I heard of a game, the title of which I have forgot, where it would kick you out the game if you lost your connection while playing. Not everyone has a rock stable connection. This was NOT a multiplayer online game.

Dumb question: in the Options, is there a selection to turn off cloud saves? I'm guessing thats what it's doing....

This is the only reason I don't play StarCraft 2.

From what I understand (and I may be WAAAAAAAY off) you can play it off line but a personal profile and saving require an online connection, however brief that may be. Well I don't want to have to depend on that connection being there when I'm done playing and need to actually go do something else. ;P

Actually, it saves locally, I checked. And steam's cloud saves (which the game is reported to use) work by saving locally and synchronizing when you close the game, anyway, so it shouldn't be causing this issue. They either have a bug, or they deliberately want saves to not work while offline.

I see. You're right - that's needlessly crappy and buyer-unfriendly.

One quick search on the community hub for Game 1 and the conclusion is its online only.

Only thing that pops up on the community page when I load it and search for "online" is my own review. Which wasn't there before I wrote it.

And even if I'm wrong, excuse me if I don't quick search the community hub for always online requirements when the store page don't mention them.

Store pages for both games do mention broadband internet connection as a requirement.
Now I never use Steam so I can't say how that should be interpreted, but for a comparison, I checked some other games (adventure games) and none of them had any internet connection requirement.
So my uneducated guess is that when they mention internet connection in the system requirements, it should be read as "must be online to play".

I don't think you are going to find much sympathy for your cause on GOG though, many of us have never spent a single cent on Steam. And as two of the only three (free) games I have ever loaded from Steam refused to even start on another computer, I would recommend people to stay as far away from Steam as possible.

Oof. Consider your reviews upvoted. I remember playing Sacred Citadel and finding out the hard way that the game only saves your progress when you're online. Doesn't even tell you that nothing is being saved. Chronicles of Mystara also has broadband internet in the requirements, but is fully playable and savable offline. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Sacred Citadel has no such requirement listed, so the system requirements aren't a great way of telling what you're dealing with.

i have been a victim of over 400 games lost over always server connection to them to play drm,, and i myself will never use a steam game or buy one,, but thats me ,, when they shutdown gamespy i was hurt when they killed all our online playing i still miss bf2 just to name one of many i lost friends online on servers i played on for years....


gog brought me back to buying games after 10 years never trusting a game company again...

if we buy a game i know they want us to say lic them,, but to me a game i buy is like a book or comic somthing i love and like using till i dont want to use it,, drm and online servers needed is lame, and well to me it will be why i never spend money on their work,, wish they remenber we just dont buy a game and play it once and throw away ,

some buy them and collect and keep them for years,,,, maybe im a dinosaur but i still love games from the 80s ,90s 2000 and beyond,,,

Gog has proved to me some companies see we love their work and want to use them way past the time they made them..

P.S i hope more games come to gog drm free and we can once again say yes i have that game wana play it and not omg their server is gone i cant play it...

Sorry for rant ,, being new year this is last 2016 rant on drm, and steam... may gog go on a long time and thanks gog team for knowing games is the love of owning and return playing over years and not a lic for drm :)

I simply did a search for "saving" or something similar in the forum and found people complaining about the same thing. :)

It's a real shame a lot of Steam users don't seem to care, and developers think such a scheme is a good idea. Upvoted your reviews.

I can tolerate Steam games that work in offline mode and don't have extra DRM, but I would never buy an online-only singleplayer game.

And many others do. In fact, I think this is where people would actually care about an always online requirement, instead of going "just get online you idiot, lol, who cares". Let's not turn this into yet another us Vs them thread.


Ah yes, that I found when looking for solutions. But that's an specific search to make, which I wouldn't think there's a need to do before buying a game. This is a pretty big deal, IMO, and it should be on the store page; therefore my review.
What a shame, indeed.

I wouldn't say it is a big deal but I can understand why you're pissed about it.