Diesel generator backup. If you run out of diesel, pedals.

Without power DRM is kind of irrelevant :p

No, but you can't even use the offline mode of steam once it comes back.

LoL. Wow, that would really make my day :)

Well that's certainly not true at all.

Yes it is. It happened to me. I was without internet for about a month. Someone hit a powerline pole or some shit, once my power came back I was unable to get onto offline mode to play any steam game because it said I needed to log in online. And someone earlier in the thread just said it was also.

While that may sound dumb, what's even more silly is that it's actually more convenient that way if you tend to use Steam a lot and Uplay only once every now and then. Since the game will generally be ready to play on your Steam version (even the uplay part of it), while if you start up Uplay It's not uncommon to have to have to restart it for updates to the client/games.
Someone may have said so, and they may have had the same issues, but I know for a fact it works that way since I've tested this myself years ago already (in similar discussions). Your computer does not need to stay on for offline mode to keep working. It *generally* works fine if you turn off the computer and come back to it later.

Of course, if the computer has a powerline cut to it, I have no idea what happens to the client, but I imagine it's not much different from a bluescreen effect and I've seen offline mode work after those.

The amount of misconceptions about Offline mode on this forum is as disproportionately high on this forum as the number of private/semi private profiles is disproportionately high among GOG's on my Steam friends list vs rest of my Steam friends list :)

It sure as hell didn't work, I couldn't logon to offline mode whatsoever no matter what i tried. I remember it pissing me off to no end.

No the funniest part with uplay is, at least with Far Cry 3, if you have the steam overlay on, the game crashes, because it can'T do Uplay and Steam Overlay at the same time :p

Also I'm a bit late to the party, and didn't read through all 11 pages, but even if the installer goes to steam, you technically have the game on the disc. It's in the encrypted steam format, and will be installed from there. After that Steam installs the patches and crap, hence the online requirement. I know because that's how my boxed Borderlands 2, Deus Ex Human Revolution, and a few other games behaved.

I'm not saying it didn't happen to you. As I've already said before, Steam's offline mode is not without it's bugs. In that sense it's not reliable enough yet. What I *can* say is that that's not how Offline mode works/is supposed to work, and I know for a fact it does work even if the computer's power has been off.

AFAIK, in order to work offline it needs to have saved the authentication information. Whatever it is that it needs, wherever it is that it saves it. Normally this should allow to work fine, but if you get unlucky and steam suddenly exits without saving it properly you're fucked until you can go online again. It shouldn't happen, it won't happen to most people, but it does happen.

Conflicting DRMs annoy me to no end. It's like I can summon anger on will just thinking about it. I had that issue with Splinter Cell Conviction which I stupidly bought from Steam and it didn't stop after I disabled both Overlays too. Fortunately I downloaded one of those fixes, neither clients needed after that but unfortunately the game itself had technical and gameplay issues on its own so that small amount of happiness didn't last long after bypassing the DRM issue.