Valve plans on improving Steam's offline mode

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Blade-Runner

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http://www.destructoid.com/valve-plans-on-improving-steam-s-offline-mode-264861.phtml

You may have noticed that Steam's "offline mode" isn't foolproof, in the sense that it may periodically ask you to "check in" occasionally. Evidently, this is a bug, and not a feature, according to Valve on the Steam Community forums. Valve poster "hengryg" notes that "offline Mode is designed to be indefinite," and goes on to say that "the client should allow you to run in Offline Mode for as long as you like."

Not only should you report any issues you may have to Valve as a bug, but henryg also mentions that a new authentication procedure is on the way, making offline mode "more robust." A lot of us have been wondering what happens to your games should Valve go under some day. While that question may not be fully answered until the end times, it's great to know that there's at least something in the works to improve offline play.
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It's good for people who travel a lot I suppose. I've used offline mode from time to time without issue and it's useful at times.
 
Having offline mode on a secondary PC goes a long way. I welcome any improvements.
 
It often tells me it doesnt know what its doing and makes me sign in.
 
Geforcepat said:
Well i guess 10 years isn't too bad.dont know why this took so long
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That was my first thought as well, lol. "Well, it looks like almost all our user base has reliable internet now... I guess we better go and finally fix offline mode then".
 
Better late than never. I think EA hasn't improved Origin in quite some time. Ubisoft has barely done anything to Uplay as of late either. I really can't complain with Valve's improvements to Steam.
 
Switching to offline mode while there is no Internet connection, or be able to use games without being connected, would be huge.
 
Geforcepat said:
Well i guess 10 years isn't too bad.dont know why this took so long
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Valve takes 10 years to fix something (as basic as offline mode)
Everyone: eh, it's cool.

I can't even begin to imagine the shitstorm that would ensue if it were EA/Origin and not Valve.



But that's hypocrisy for you.
 
They should consider fixing the whole sluggish, poorly-designed fucking article in its entirety.

I just saw that they've updated the downloading process recently. Something that was as wonderfully streamlined as clicking "install" and being able to right-click the entry to pause/resume the download has now been stupidly obfuscated by some design-for-the-sake-of-design journeyman into a separate downloads page. Which is obviously the best idea when your front-end is so woefully sluggish and temperamental that navigating the fucking store page beings back memories of enduring an early version of IE, with unloaded, unresponsive pages more often than functioning ones.

Something as significant and up-fucked as the current offline mode issues are probably going to result in them somehow designing a peripheral software that monitors your heart rate as you game whilst doing nothing to address the existing issue.
 
As somebody who travels for work, I really appreciate this, and also wonder what took them so long.
 
bigdogchris said:
Switching to offline mode while there is no Internet connection, or be able to use games without being connected, would be huge.
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That's how offline does work, for me anyway.....but there are a contingent of users who complain that its bugged and not working properly.
 
Blade-Runner said:
That's how offline does work, for me anyway.....but there are a contingent of users who complain that its bugged and not working properly.
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To use Steam offline.. you have to logged into the account once.. On the same PC. It saves the login data locally. Then you can use it offline however much you want.
 
MavericK96 said:
No one cares about Origin. :D
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True. I don't think I've used Origin for anything other than BF3, which I had to be online to play anyway and frankly didn't play for all that long. On Steam, however, I have a couple of hundred games, many of them single player only.
 
Dion said:
To use Steam offline.. you have to logged into the account once.. On the same PC. It saves the login data locally. Then you can use it offline however much you want.
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That's been my experience as well, as long as my account details are saved steam will automatically launch into offline mode if the net is down.
 
Parmenides said:
That is true, who's playing to know the issues? ;) Though Origin is the spawn of satan, they have had a somewhat better offline mode experience to some degree, which isn't saying much.
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Tudz said:
True. I don't think I've used Origin for anything other than BF3, which I had to be online to play anyway and frankly didn't play for all that long. On Steam, however, I have a couple of hundred games, many of them single player only.
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I've been using it for Dead Space 3 co-op lately, and it's fucking pissing me off. Somehow it is not able to run the Origin overlay in-game and thus I have no access to the DLC menu to spend Ration Seals to get more materials. I tried re-installing Origin, using the beta, updating, restarting, all kinds of shit...still won't work. I'm guessing it's conflicting with something else I run in the background, but I have no idea what it would be.

So yeah, fuck Origin.
 
Parmenides said:
That is true, who's playing to know the issues? ;) Though Origin is the spawn of satan, they have had a somewhat better offline mode experience to some degree, which isn't saying much.
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For example - I have 3 DLC for Mass Effect 3. These DLC are completely unavailable if you're offline (which I assume is true for any EA game). If the DLC are unavailable, so is your savegame. No savegame makes playing it pretty useless. This was also true for Dragon Age 2, which I likely will never play again anyway...

With Steam, I've had absolutely no trouble playing any of my offline games in the last 2 years.
 
MavericK96 said:
I've been using it for Dead Space 3 co-op lately, and it's fucking pissing me off. Somehow it is not able to run the Origin overlay in-game and thus I have no access to the DLC menu to spend Ration Seals to get more materials. I tried re-installing Origin, using the beta, updating, restarting, all kinds of shit...still won't work. I'm guessing it's conflicting with something else I run in the background, but I have no idea what it would be.

So yeah, fuck Origin.
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Something similar has happened to me with Mass Effect 3. The overlay no longer functions in game, and attempting to join a friend's game gave me a "different DLC installed" error even though we have all the same DLC. I've tried toggling the overlay settings on and off (with a restart of origin in between) in both the game settings and the global origin settings to no effect. I'm not going to bother reinstalling 14.5 gigs of ME3 and it's DLC just to troubleshoot.
 
I'm glad Steam is doing this. It sets a good precedent, as more and more companies force you to go online for everything, it's nice to know at least one company has the interest of the players in mind.
 
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