unless this changed in the last 2 years, steam detects if a game has an “update pending” so regardless if you go offline, if it detected there was an update it prevents the game from launching. I tried to get around my parents crap download with that trick and it failed.
A workaround you can do is, before launching steam disconnect from the internet, then launch steam, when it launches it will say no connection and give an option to launch in offline mode, once offline mode is launched you can turn your internet back on. Just keep in mind steam also has to refresh your games every once and awhile as well so you have to go online at /some/ point or it won’t let you play the game offline anymore. Steam is super annoying in that matter.
edit: I just attempted this again on my laptop, they have slightly fixed the issue. If an update is queued when you’re online you can remove it from the queue and then go offline and you can play it again. However if you are online you still need to update in order to play the game. This is much better than what it used to be, which was if it detected that you need an update even if you canceled the update and went offline it would say update required.
old post:
If you could point me to these settings that you indicate it would be much appreciated,
Please be aware that if the setting your indicating is the allow background updates or the prevent auto updates. While that will make it so the game will not update automatically it will still register the game as requiring update which means if you go offline it won’t let you play the game until the update has been done.
I’m going to go test it again because it’s been a while since I’ve tried update in a few minutes
unless this changed in the last 2 years, steam detects if a game has an “update pending” so regardless if you go offline, if it detected there was an update it prevents the game from launching. I tried to get around my parents crap download with that trick and it failed.
Which is stupid! I want to play.
Well my Internet connection makes it a 3 Minute wait for 40 gigs.
But steam should stop the Update if I want to play
A workaround you can do is, before launching steam disconnect from the internet, then launch steam, when it launches it will say no connection and give an option to launch in offline mode, once offline mode is launched you can turn your internet back on. Just keep in mind steam also has to refresh your games every once and awhile as well so you have to go online at /some/ point or it won’t let you play the game offline anymore. Steam is super annoying in that matter.
There are multiple settings for that.
edit: I just attempted this again on my laptop, they have slightly fixed the issue. If an update is queued when you’re online you can remove it from the queue and then go offline and you can play it again. However if you are online you still need to update in order to play the game. This is much better than what it used to be, which was if it detected that you need an update even if you canceled the update and went offline it would say update required.
old post: If you could point me to these settings that you indicate it would be much appreciated,
Please be aware that if the setting your indicating is the allow background updates or the prevent auto updates. While that will make it so the game will not update automatically it will still register the game as requiring update which means if you go offline it won’t let you play the game until the update has been done.
I’m going to go test it again because it’s been a while since I’ve tried update in a few minutes
Didn’t know that. Yup, that’s bad.
Last week, simply restarting (exiting and opening) the client got around that.
You can usually go launch with the games executable, even if it’s already started updating!