Is there a way around using Steam?
 

I'm finding it more and more irritating all the time. I only have a couple of games through it (Audiosurf and Vampire), but if it's at all possible, I'd like to get away from having to have steam open every god damn time I want to play them.

Nope.

What's even better is buying Half Life 2 all those years ago, going home, only to find out you can't play it without an internet connection and hey, you're out in the middle of nowhere and don't have internet because your area is stuck in the 1970s country scene!

Well of course there are ways around it. They just all happen to be illegal. Which is why Steam isn't very good, hackers have cracked it long ago yet Steam still punishes it's users as if they are all bad people.

If only all the games on it weren't so damn good and the download speeds so high...

Please tell the Prime Minister all about this. I'm sure he'll be appreciative.

I'm sure Senator John Google will be more than happy to provide proper answers to you.

But without any law breaking i can just tell you this much: Most of the ways behind Steam Hacking revolve around downloading the full game itself in a patched version... so, just "turning off" Steam-Slaveness in your legaly owned games is not something i've hear a lot about

Isn't there an offline mode for it? Or did I miss something?

It's always on and connected via internet.

Which sucks if you live on dialup or have other issues with internet access.

You can set it to offline mode and it will then not have anything to do with the internet at all and you put your pc in a cave and play Episode 2 if you want.

Steam does have to be running to play it, but it's not like it's a distraction or a resource hog.

HEY BITVYPER LEARN TO DEAL

Even when you set it to offline mode sometimes though it won't let you do it. I remember when I was in business class 2 years ago, Garry's Mod was a little fussy about whether it would let me play or not. At least I could put it in a window so Virtual Desktops would let me hide it...

The only time I ever had that happen was when I wanted to play Opposing Fronts, and it made be go online and login/register an account with THQ or somesuch. That was the game though, not steam.


It was still really shitty.