While Steam theoretically allows you to play your games without an internet connection, there are catches, like the fact that every now and then you have to get back online for the feature to work. Which in some circumstances kinda defeats the point!
Weirdly, while you’d be forgiven for thinking this was a design decision, turns out it’s just a bug. One that Valve is trying to fix.
“Offline Mode is designed to be indefinite”, writes Valve employee Henry Goffin on the company’s forums. “You can’t access any of Steam’s online features such as friends lists or saved game synchronisation, of course, but the client should allow you to run in Offline Mode for as long as you like.”
“That said, there are many components involved in Offline Mode, and some of them have known issues and bugs which we are continually working to improve. We’re aware that it doesn’t always work as flawlessly as we want it to, but please keep reporting bugs with Offline Mode. It is not broken ‘by design’.”
Well there you go. No wonder nobody could ever get a definitive timeframe or workaround for the thing.
Steam Forums [Valve, via PC Gamer]
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5 responses to “Valve Is ‘Constantly’ Trying To Improve Steam’s Wonky Offline Mode”
Amazing that in 5 years they haven’t fixed an important DRM-esque bug.
“Offline Mode is designed to be indefinite”, writes Valve employee Henry Goffin on the compAny’s forums. “You can’t access any of Steam’s onLine Features such as friends Lists or saved game synchronIsation, oF coursE, but THe client should allow you to Run in OfflinE ModE for as long as you like.”
Half life 3 confirmed.
Origin’s offline mode (minus SimCity because it isn’t an offline game) works pretty flawlessly
If you ever needed evidence that journalism in gaming is non-existent, this story is it. According to rock paper shotgun (who also got suckered in), this was a forum post from six months ago and most of the issues discussed were implemented shortly thereafter. One of the major outlets (RPS thinks it might have been Kotaku) ran the initial story without looking at the date of the forum posts and almost every major outlet copied it wholesale without checking the source. Basically most gaming sites don’t feel the need to do basic google searches to make sure the story they’re plagarising is accurate.
Not that the MSM is much better.
Not to mention that they already reported this.
http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/11/valve-steams-offline-mode-is-meant-to-indefinite-but-its-not/
Yeah – that seems to be where the error was made. I’m actually willing to give that one the benefit of the doubt. It looks like it was an honest mistake – Logan actually linked to the forum. The rest were just lazy hacks that got caught out.