PHJF wrote on Jul 18, 2011, 11:44:
ng problems with my internet the other day (turned out to be my less-than-year-old router) and wanted to play a game offline. But the geniuses at Valve, in their infinite wisdom, require that you enter offline mode while being online, so I was locked out of all my games.
Actually, that's not strictly true. Offline mode will work as long as your account details are saved to the computer, as I was in a similar situation about 6 months back. However, sometimes games won't have updated properly, which means they'll be inaccessible (I had this with F1 2010). I definitely agree that more work is needed and there shouldn't ever be a situation where legitimate owners are prevented from playing games they've bought.
Still, all the advantages that Steam offers easily outweighs the negatives. Don't forget that before Steam most people were having to search for crack sites for NO-CD patches or else constantly switching CDs/DVDs; searching for patches that would then have to be applied in particular orders; manually copying CD-keys and having to keep them stored somewhere safe, etc. Steam completely changed the industry and it was definitely for the better. I just hope that Valve can work to remove some of the remaining annoyances (things like every game wanting to install DirectX, etc on first run).
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."