On Steam
Monday, December 13th, 2004Have seen a fair bit of bitching aimed at Valve with regard to Steam, the distribution & authorization system required to run Half Life 2. Until now I had assumed that people were shitty because they couldn’t play the game until they had authorized their copy via Steam… but now I realize [my internet connection being temporarily down] that you can’t play unless you are connected… ie you can only ever launch this [single player] game while you are online!
When I tried to run HL2 without a net connection I got an error saying “This operation cannot be completed when Steam is in offline mode.” Even though the game still appears in the Steam menu with a launch option. Showing properties on HL2 explicitly declares: “Offline Mode: Ready” — Silly me had assumed that this meant: “Ready to play” , when of course I should have read it as: “Ready to tell you to fuck off, even though you’ve just spent US$60 to download this game”
Until now I had considered Steam to be a slightly fiddly but logical way to distribute content, but now I see it more as a steaming pile of shit, effectively forcing my computer to ask Valve’s permission every single time I want to play this game.
__________
UPDATE: It seems I am mistaken, it is not so simple as I had thought, and now it does seem possible to play offline without hacking; unlike earlier today [???], if I disable my net connection I can now can play Half-Life 2 offline — so basically, I don’t have a clue what the problem was before, but the official word is that offline play is supported. Apologies for the half-cocked rant, but hey, you know… Half-Life 2…
December 26th, 2004 at 7:52 pm
I agree with your original view. I played successfully online at a friend’s place, then went home and attempted to play, it too went into offline mode but no matter what I try it won’t work in offline mode. I have disabled my NIC card, I have done everything that everyone else has recommended and yet I still get the message “This operation cannot be completed when steam in in offline mode”.
You were right the first time… Steam sux!
February 2nd, 2005 at 6:40 am
Run STEAM from my computer, appears the message “This cannot be completed when Steam is in offline mode”, but I am within Internet, and with estatus ONLINE from www.steampowered.com. I have installed Windows XP pro and the SP2. how I can correct and register
October 11th, 2005 at 8:59 am
http://support.steampowered.com/cgi-bin/steampowered.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=282&p_created=1101182584&p_sid=6tEt7BQh&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MTY0JnBfcHJvZHM9MCZwX2NhdHM9MCZwX3B2PSZwX2N2PSZwX3NlYXJjaF90eXBlPWFuc3dlcnMuc2VhcmNoX25sJnBfcGFnZT0xJnBfc2VhcmNoX3RleHQ9Y2hlY2sgZmlsZXM*&p_li=&p_topview=1
Go there - at the bottom of the page are the following options:
To validate Half-Life 2 (applaunch 220)
To validate Counter-Strike: Source (applaunch 240)
Click on both of them. Let them validate one by one.
Check to see if the Amount Aquired option has dropped below 100%.
If it has - Connect and redownload the missing pieces. Then try ofline mode again.
If it hasn’t - Sorry…. Keep searching. ( Or try deleting all local game content if u feel like a 850mb Download. )
April 13th, 2006 at 10:04 am
the same here
I couldnty do that either
December 7th, 2006 at 1:17 am
Dont see the point of spending hard earned cash to buy a game as hl2 and not being able to plat the game in offline mode, im still having issues however i did manage to play off line mode last year what has ghaned since???/
August 12th, 2007 at 5:26 am
Yeah, I got a Offline mode prob too, Steam refuses to help… hehehe