3/3/11 Steam Weekend Deal: Ubisoft Hit Collection

[mindcycle]

Guess I dont really understand the off line mode then. Dont you have to be on the internet to log on to steam first and then go to off line mode, or can you set it to log on the next time you want without being on the internet??
Still think you could have a conflict with wiping out your saved games if not careful. In other words, can you have separate save games in on line and off line modes?

From my experience steam will attempt to connect to the server, and if it can't it will go into offline mode after a minute or two. If my internet is down, which has actually happened quite a bit recently, I have to go through this minor annoyance. There is certainly a trade off between DRM and convenience with steam.

I would never buy a game for full price on steam as their game updates are slow to show up and you have to deal with stuff like "offline mode", etc.. However, it's a decent system to pick up games for cheap when they go on sale.

 

[simonizor]

From my experience steam will attempt to connect to the server, and if it can't it will go into offline mode after a minute or two. If my internet is down, which has actually happened quite a bit recently, I have to go through this minor annoyance. There is certainly a trade off between DRM and convenience with steam.

I would never buy a game for full price on steam as their game updates are slow to show up and you have to deal with stuff like "offline mode", etc.. However, it's a decent system to pick up games for cheap when they go on sale.

I have no problems running steam in offline mode. I just did it yesterday with Just Cause 2. I took my laptop over to a friends, opened steam with no internet connection, it displayed the choice to go into offline mode, and I launched Just Cause 2 just as if I were connected to the internet.

Also, no trouble with updates. The majority of the games on steam anymore were designed to be on steam, so you have to have steam to get them or update them. The others don't follow very far behind their retail counterparts when it comes to updates.

TL;DR: Everyone likes to bitch about Steam, but it's pretty much the best thing that's happened to PC gaming ever. It brings so much to the table, and there are so many great things about it that cast a shadow on the small things that don't always work properly.

 

[pmv]

From my experience steam will attempt to connect to the server, and if it can't it will go into offline mode after a minute or two. If my internet is down, which has actually happened quite a bit recently, I have to go through this minor annoyance. There is certainly a trade off between DRM and convenience with steam.

I would never buy a game for full price on steam as their game updates are slow to show up and you have to deal with stuff like "offline mode", etc.. However, it's a decent system to pick up games for cheap when they go on sale.

True.

The problem with 'offline mode' occurs if a game starts to download a big update. Then it can't be run in offline mode again till you get the whole update done.

My issue with Steam is that my ISP limits me on downloaded Gb per month. Each time there's a large sale it then takes me at least 2 months to download everything, because of that limit.

And I don't know what I'd do if I lost a HD and had to redownload everything - it would take me up to a year, I reckon. And Steam backup is incredibly slow, strangely wasteful of space, and a pain to use (I tried, gave up when it seemed it would take several days to finish archiving everything, and in any case it wouldn't fit on my external HD!). If you buy stuff on DVD you don't have this problem (except when the DVD then makes you download it from Steam anyway!)