Why does Steam even bother having an "offline mode"

[Jakub]

When, if you click "start in offline mode", it will tell you it can't connect to the internet.

Uhh... My internet is down. I'd like to play some games. I know you can't connect.

[JPR]

You have to configure the games to be available in offline mode first.

And, actually, some of the games are always unplayable in offline mode (Company of Heroes, for one).

[wildpokerman]

Uhh... My internet is down. I'd like to play some games. I know you can't connect.

Should I ask the obvious how are you posting with your Internet down?

[rjcc]

Should I ask the obvious how are you posting with your Internet down?

LOLzz

[Jakub]

Should I ask the obvious how are you posting with your Internet down?
It went back up after being off most of the day.

[wildpokerman]

Well go play a game and relax! Steam is an online service and when your Internet goes down you aren't able to access it.

My bill pay is online too and my fridge runs on electricity but it's not like I go driving around trying to pay my bills the old fashioned way when the web goes down or organize a hunting party if the electricity goes down.

The Internet is a modern utility and you're going to lose access once in a while. If you lose your games for a while it's not the end of the world. What I mean it's totally not worth stewing all day about it and posting on a message board once the problem is corrected.

[theKevin]

Well go play a game and relax! Steam is an online service and when your Internet goes down you aren't able to access it.

My bill pay is online too and my fridge runs on electricity but it's not like I go driving around trying to pay my bills the old fashioned way when the web goes down or organize a hunting party if the electricity goes down.

The Internet is a modern utility and you're going to lose access once in a while. If you lose your games for a while it's not the end of the world. What I mean it's totally not worth stewing all day about it and posting on a message board once the problem is corrected.

Yeah, but if you lose power, your fridge doesn't hydrologically seal. You can still feed your family the Red Baron frozen pizzas you were going to have for dinner.

Unlike Jakub, who is now restricted from playing games he payed for because his 'modern utility' failed.

[Sarkus]

I had nothing but a dial-up connection for a few months last summer and Steam had no problem at all letting me play my games. I simply told Steam to start in offline mode and everything worked.

[Tankero]

Perhaps he was trying to play TF2...

[wildpokerman]

Yeah, but if you lose power, your fridge doesn't hydrologically seal. You can still feed your family the Red Baron frozen pizzas you were going to have for dinner.

Unlike Jakub, who is now restricted from playing games he payed for because his 'modern utility' failed.

So he'd still be bitching about Steam if his electricity was off for a few hours? I suppose Valve has an obligation to provide service no matter what's going on at your house.

[Shadari]

Perhaps he was trying to play TF2...
The game could use some bots!

[Warpstorm]

You can still feed your family the Red Baron frozen pizzas you were going to have for dinner.


Only if you like them frozen :)

I configured nearly all of my Steam games to work offline (and most will if you do this).

[theKevin]

Only if you like them frozen :)

Well just don't leave the door open silly.

[Mordrak]

So he'd still be bitching about Steam if his electricity was off for a few hours? I suppose Valve has an obligation to provide service no matter what's going on at your house.

Look, tethering your games to an internet connection is not only an inconvenience to customers but also ignores first sale doctrine which removes value from the purchase. It obviously does, because he couldn't play the game in this instance, which he would have had the games been offered normally. It's perfectly reasonable to complain about that, whatever obligations you think Valve does or does not have, because Valve can control how it chooses to offer its games.

People expect to access media they purchase when they want to. That's not going to change anytime soon no matter what semantic games you want to play.

[SirBruce]

People had the same objections when Steam was first announced. Nevertheless, Steam has been wildly successful, and this hasn't been an issue for the vast majority of its users.

Bruce

[krayzkrok]

Also, if you offer a service and then that service doesn't work as advertised, people are naturally going to feel aggrieved. For the record my "offline mode" in Steam only seems to work properly if I set that mode before I try and launch the game. Once the game tries to launch and connect to Steam without being told not to, it seems to ignore your repeated "only joking!" requests that follow.

[Shadari]

People had the same objections when Steam was first announced. Nevertheless, Steam has been wildly successful, and this hasn't been an issue for the vast majority of its users.
It's been successful because it has improved significantly. The OP has identified another area where it could be improved even more.

[theKevin]

What exactly does steam do when you prepare a game for offline mode? Cache more data locally? It seems like with Steam most game data is stored locally anyway, I'd imagine that offline mode merely disables some sort of DRM protection where the game has to ping to the servers.

[mono]

Only if you like them frozen :)

I configured nearly all of my Steam games to work offline (and most will if you do this).

How do you configure an individual title to play offline? I only see the global 'Go Offline' option under the File drop-down menu.

[caesarbear]

Look, tethering your games to an internet connection is not only an inconvenience to customers but also ignores first sale doctrine which removes value from the purchase.
When I bought Race07 I had the choice of either installing it as singleplayer without the need for Steam or as an on-line game. I chose the on-line install since it had the added value of automatic updates, in-game community, etc.

Steam provides a method to use your games during an expected internet outage. How can they possibly be responsible for an unexpected outage? Internet connectivity is simply a requirement of modern computing.

[Zylon]

Steam provides a method to use your games during an expected internet outage. How can they possibly be responsible for an unexpected outage?
By sucking less.

[caesarbear]

By sucking less.
What would you suggest the system for unexpected offline usage be? How would that work?

[Zylon]

Well, assuming you're being the kind of dense that isn't intentional, I imagine it would work something like this: You know that part where Steam cries and screams that it can't phone home? Skip that part and just play the fucking game.

Yeah, I know, genius right?

[worm]

It's not like I use the offline mode often. However I don't remember Beyond the Sword giving me much trouble.

[Fugitive]

Are we sure there's even really an argument here? After installing Steam and a handful of games on my laptop, I tested offline mode by disconnecting all networks before starting Steam, and the handful of games I tried still worked fine.

[caesarbear]

Well, assuming you're being the kind of dense that isn't intentional, I imagine it would work something like this: You know that part where Steam cries and screams that it can't phone home? Skip that part and just play the fucking game.

Yeah, I know, genius right?
So make it free to pirate in other words. No, I would not call that genius.

[Zylon]

So make it free to pirate in other words. No, I would not call that genius.
Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your axe grinding.

[caesarbear]

Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt your axe grinding.
Oh no you misunderstand, there's no other motive here. I want you to answer. I want you to expound on your ideas, please. Tell us what you would do if you were Valve. I don't want to be left with a curt teasing one-liner when you promise us an intelligent solution. By all means, explain yourself. I want to know how you make Steam detect whether a internet outage is a legitimate loss of service or someone trying to access an illegitimate copy.

[Aeon221]

Oh no you misunderstand, there's no other motive here. I want you to answer. I want you to expound on your ideas, please. Tell us what you would do if you were Valve. I don't want to be left with a curt teasing one-liner when you promise us an intelligent solution. By all means, explain yourself. I want to know how you make Steam detect whether a internet outage is a legitimate loss of service or someone trying to access an illegitimate copy.

Remember the anti-piracy stuff they had back in the 80s? It should ask you RIDICULOUS riddles, and then you'd have to phone Valve and they would give you the answer and it would let you play for a day offline!

Brilliant, I know. Please, reserve your accolades.

[Mordrak]

People had the same objections when Steam was first announced. Nevertheless, Steam has been wildly successful, and this hasn't been an issue for the vast majority of its users.

Bruce

Jakub isn't a Valve employee or executive, so such justifications don't change much when his purchase doesn't meet expectations. It's the PR equivalent, "Boy, it sucks to be you. Hahaha."



When I bought Race07 I had the choice of either installing it as singleplayer without the need for Steam or as an on-line game. I chose the on-line install since it had the added value of automatic updates, in-game community, etc.

Steam provides a method to use your games during an expected internet outage. How can they possibly be responsible for an unexpected outage? Internet connectivity is simply a requirement of modern computing.


They aren't responsible for the internet outage, they are responsible for how their software works. Jakub encountered a problem playing offline using the offline mode. He griped about it. It could be Jakub's fault or it could be Steam's fault (either by faultily recognizing his network was unplugged or by not standardizing the license of all offered games to include offline mode play). But that's what happens when people pay for something and it doesn't meet expectations.

[Jakub]

Well go play a game and relax! Steam is an online service and when your Internet goes down you aren't able to access it.

My bill pay is online too and my fridge runs on electricity but it's not like I go driving around trying to pay my bills the old fashioned way when the web goes down or organize a hunting party if the electricity goes down.

The Internet is a modern utility and you're going to lose access once in a while. If you lose your games for a while it's not the end of the world. What I mean it's totally not worth stewing all day about it and posting on a message board once the problem is corrected.
Well there's the rub though:

Why does Steam, after being unable to connect, offer me a "Start in Offline Mode" option, and then when I click that all it does is tell me "Unable to connect to internet" and it closes down?

[Jakub]

They aren't responsible for the internet outage, they are responsible for how their software works. Jakub encountered a problem playing offline using the offline mode. He griped about it. It could be Jakub's fault or it could be Steam's fault (either by faultily recognizing his network was unplugged or by not standardizing the license of all offered games to include offline mode play). But that's what happens when people pay for something and it doesn't meet expectations.
Thanks :)

I really don't understand if I'm doing something wrong, but it seemed silly for Steam to offer me an offline mode option only to say "oh, but we can't connect to the internet" and then closing itself.

It's like if your car said "Your car is out of gas, would you like to drive in gas-free mode?", and then refuses to start.

[Jakub]

Yeah, but if you lose power, your fridge doesn't hydrologically seal. You can still feed your family the Red Baron frozen pizzas you were going to have for dinner.

Unlike Jakub, who is now restricted from playing games he payed for because his 'modern utility' failed.
That's not even really my gripe, though you do have a good point.

I didn't even realize Steam had an offline mode until I saw the popup. What confuses me is that when I try to select offline mode, it then tells me it can't connect to the internet?

[Fugitive]

Well there's the rub though:

Why does Steam, after being unable to connect, offer me a "Start in Offline Mode" option, and then when I click that all it does is tell me "Unable to connect to internet" and it closes down?
It should work, and I tested it myself yesterday. Have you successfully connected at least once before though, and applied any client updates? (I think if there's an update pending but you don't apply it right away, that can prevent it from working since it wants to go get the update first.)

And there's Valve's own support page (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555) on how to use it.

[Jakub]

It should work, and I tested it myself yesterday. Have you successfully connected at least once before though, and applied any client updates? (I think if there's an update pending but you don't apply it right away, that can prevent it from working since it wants to go get the update first.)

And there's Valve's own support page (https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555) on how to use it.
I'll give it a shot, thanks.

[Moore]

Oh no you misunderstand, there's no other motive here. I want you to answer. I want you to expound on your ideas, please. Tell us what you would do if you were Valve. I don't want to be left with a curt teasing one-liner when you promise us an intelligent solution. By all means, explain yourself. I want to know how you make Steam detect whether a internet outage is a legitimate loss of service or someone trying to access an illegitimate copy.

that really shouldnt be a concern or hassle for the end user in any way shape or form.

[caesarbear]

that really shouldnt be a concern or hassle for the end user in any way shape or form.
If a clock radio has a backup battery to keep the time during power outages, would you consider it an issue for the enduser if they never installed the battery when they got it, or would you place the fault on the manufacturer?

[Moore]

Beats me, my cell phone is my alarm clock, its always on battery. And my games are 99% of 360, and I bitch about this same issue with my replacement 360, though that has since been fixed.

I like steam just fine, mainly because I havent really used it since hl2 came out. Though I did rebuy hl2 on my 360.

[Zylon]

If a clock radio has a backup battery to keep the time during power outages, would you consider it an issue for the enduser if they never installed the battery when they got it, or would you place the fault on the manufacturer?
If Steam's offline mode worked as transparently as a clock radio's internal battery, nobody would be complaining.

[Mordrak]

If Steam's offline mode worked as transparently as a clock radio's internal battery, nobody would be complaining.


I certainly agree that if this were true, there wouldn't be complaints (or at least as many). But the whole, energy dependence analogy is a faulty analogy.

If a clock radio has a backup battery to keep the time during power outages, would you consider it an issue for the enduser if they never installed the battery when they got it, or would you place the fault on the manufacturer?

Refrigerators, clocks, any machine or electronic device, requires an energy source. Period. There is no getting around that. Engineers can't design around that, since, that's how our universe works. I can't fault the manufacturers if I run out of energy*.

However, there is no physical law that prevents Valve from making game software that doesn't require an internet connection, or making the offline mode seamless, or having more precise and informative UI feedback when something doesn't work, or keeps them from standardizing the license of all products on the service, etc.

Valve made a conscious decision to create its service and products the way it did. Therefore, if a consumer is unhappy with some aspect of that, Valve is at least partly responsible, if not wholly. Valve may choose to ignore that customer, if that customer is in the minority, but that does not magically shift the responsibility on to that consumer to fall in line with everyone else.

Energy dependency is not analogous to internet dependency for all applications (though for some like email, full functionality requires it, by the very definition of what email is).

So please, stop using that flawed analogy.


*However, I still might be able to fault them on how energy efficient (or sustainable) their particular solution for energy dependence, again depending on circumstance.

[Zylon]

All I can say for certain is that something, somewhere, has taken a fundamentally wrong turn when it's more hassle to play a game than it is to run Office.

[rjcc]

All I can say for certain is that something, somewhere, has taken a fundamentally wrong turn when it's more hassle to play a game than it is to run Office.

it was ever less complicated to run a game than run office?

*flashes back to editing himem.sys*

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I don't remember spending hours fiddling with soundcard drivers to get excel to open up.

[LesJarvis]

To say nothing of some of the incredibly obnoxious copy protection schemes that have appeared throughout the years. Word never demands that I dig out the manual and look up something obscure in order to keep typing.