Steam Arrggghh

[green junkie]

That's absurd. What if your cable connection goes out for a day or two (I've seen this). You can't use any of the hundreds of dollars worth of games that you purchased?! Uhg, the mentality behind these design choices is all wrong, and it's spreading. See - Diablo III.

I think the reason why the developers are going this route is because they don't want to pay the publishers, the people who print the software on CD, any of the profit.
There are a lot of upsides and down sides to this. Some of the good things are the developers don't have to worry about rather or not Wal-Mart will carry there game. And people out in the middle of no where can get the game immediately instead of waiting for it to get delivered or driving long distances to the stores.

But yea I can see why people are annoyed by this.

 

[iMacFarlane]

I think the reason why the developers are going this route is because they don't want to pay the publishers, the people who print the software on CD, any of the profit.
There are a lot of upsides and down sides to this. Some of the good things are the developers don't have to worry about rather or not Wal-Mart will carry there game. And people out in the middle of no where can get the game immediately instead of waiting for it to get delivered or driving long distances to the stores.

But yea I can see why people are annoyed by this.

All good points, but that wasn't my point. I'm a huge fan of digital distribution. I just really dislike the notion that I need to be tethered to a server somewhere to use a program I bought, that is installed on my hard drive. All of the signing and digital shenanigans should be done once, during install, then I should be able to play my games to my hearts content, regardless of internet connectivity. Steam is pretty good at this, offering an offline mode, but requiring someone to 'plan ahead' for offline mode is ridiculous, no?

And for Blizzard to require me to have a hot internet connection so that I can play a single player campaign on a game that's installed on my computer . . . keep it.

 

[Elven]

No problems with Steam here, I think OP needs to have a beer, and attempt to sort this problem with a cooler head and focus more.

 

[Dirtyharry50]

No problems with Steam here, I think OP needs to have a beer, and attempt to sort this problem with a cooler head and focus more.

Sage advice.

 

[Huntn]

That's absurd. What if your cable connection goes out for a day or two (I've seen this). You can't use any of the hundreds of dollars worth of games that you purchased?! Uhg, the mentality behind these design choices is all wrong, and it's spreading. See - Diablo III.

I need to play with it. Now that I have my internet connection back, I'm going to experiment with it for the future to see what needs to be done in advance.

Here is what Valve has to say about Offline Mode on a Mac:

Using Offline Mode on a Mac.

Please follow the instructions below to configure Offline Mode on your Mac:

Start Steam online - make sure the Remember my password box on the login window is checked
Verify that all game files are completely updated - you can see the update status for a game under the Library section (when the game shows as 100% - Ready it is ready to be played in Offline Mode)
(While being online) Launch the game you would like to play offline to verify that there are no further updates to download - shut down the game and return to Steam once you have confirmed that the game can be played
Go to Steam > Preferences to ensure the Don't save account credentials on this computer option is not selected
From the main Steam window, go to the Account menu and select Go Offline
Click Restart in Offline Mode to continue.

My game was ready to play. I had been playing it regularly. However you'll note it says to go online first and make sure there are no updates to be downloaded. I don't get this. If you can't get online with Steam, how would it know if there were updates or not and who cares? The game played before, it should continue to play offline. And I'm not sure what "Don't save account credentials" does. But it looks like to me I have to go online first and restart in offline mode. If I am playing most of the time in online mode, then this plainly sucks if you run into a situation where you can't get online. And note if you can get online, there is no need to play in offline mode.

My point is that I don't know when I'm going to be in a situation where I'll be offline, and when it happened to me, Steam would do nothing. Consistently since the origination of Steam, I've felt that this kind of a game providing system is onerous. Yes I do use Steam, but if there was another way, I'd switch quickly. And I've noted Diablo III, and I don't like its requirements.