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[Doom_master1122]

I've never even put my deck into offline mode. Just went on vacation out of my country and brought my deck with me on a plane. Played it on there, as well as in my hotels. Never connected to the internet. It was in sleep mode from my house up until me turning it on at my Gate waiting for boarding.
Games just work. I think the only game that gives me problems offline is RDR2. Installed it, played a bit on the deck, but whatever reason the Rockstar launcher just wont let me offline play it. (Steam still launches it, rockstar wont let me go further).

 

[CrustyBritches]

I just threw my Deck into offline mode, restarted, and tested about a dozen games. Mass Effect Legendary and Halo MCC both shot me to a client login and I couldn’t login. Everything else worked fine: Doom Eternal, FFVII Remake, Days Gone, Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart, HZD, God of War, DMC V, MK X, The Ascent, Dave the Diver, etc.

It’s good to have EmuDeck setup with tons of games so that at very worst you have something to play.

 

[ハトリス]

I don't even bother putting it in offline mode. Sometimes I put it in airplane mode to save some battery.
didn't have any problems with my games so far

 

[Garibaldi]

I've got a 2TB internal and a 1TB microsd in mine (emulators and roms). We went to the middle of nowhere forest for a few days with no signal at all.

The trick is to download everything you need on decent internet, then put it into offline mode and do a quick test on all your must be available games to make sure they work ok. Grab your charger, headset (and in my case a spare headset battery) and you're golden.

Then proceed to be unable to use it when you're away for more than five mins as you're too busy telling your step-son not to climb that fucking tree.

 

[Alebrije]

A hand held that can not be played off line is garage, useless.... basically 50% of the reason to have one is that , the other 50% is it's portable factor.

 

[MikeM]

Take a DS or PSP, not even joking

PSP stashed in a box for me. Take it out whenever we jump on the airplane.

It's funny how there's the whole PC MR, but also the Physical forever folks. Guess it's clear that the Physical Forever folks are not PC users at all. Just Friday shower thoughts.

Its why I have both PC and a PS5. Physical games on PS5 and digital on PC.

 

[Majormaxxx]

Take a DS or PSP, not even joking

Take a vita baby. Get yourself a 256gb SD card and fly

 

[THE DUCK]

Wait, you own a steam deck but don't have a seperate SD card loaded with batocera?

 

[SHA]

Nintendo Switch has sold 144 million units for a good reason it turns out

It's 2024 and still the internet is a hustle regardless of the accessibility.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

It's alarming how many people seem to be fine with offline mode only working if you set it to offline mode ahead of time. Why should users be expected to plan for every contingency for functionality that should *just fucking work*? There's no good reason why it doesn't.

 

[ハトリス]

It's alarming how many people seem to be fine with offline mode only working if you set it to offline mode ahead of time. Why should users be expected to plan for every contingency for functionality that should *just fucking work*? There's no good reason why it doesn't.

But it just works fine even without using offline mode. I have never used offline mode before and I can still play my games even when I'm not connected to any network or in airplane mode.
maybe there are some always on games that don't work, but it seems like I don't have any of those games...

 

[Megatron]

Before you leave, switch your Steamdeck to offline mode and open the games you want to play. If any don’t open, then connect and download what you need. I’ve had no problems with it. I have had this issue with the Switch though.l ironically. ‘Sorry you can’t play Mario Odyssey offline because it needs an update’

 

[Megatron]

It's alarming how many people seem to be fine with offline mode only working if you set it to offline mode ahead of time. Why should users be expected to plan for every contingency for functionality that should *just fucking work*? There's no good reason why it doesn't.

I mean you can stomp your feet and throw a tantrum or you can just accept this is what I need to do if I want to play portably and plan accordingly. As always, vote with your wallet. Don’t buy systems if you don’t like these realities.

 

[Minsc]

Purchasing your platforms/devices around having instances in your life you will unknowingly not have the internet and also at the same time be in a place where you'd want to play only the latest release which would require online authentication or have some DRM in and have nothing else to play on any other device instead sounds like a complete non-factor for me.

It's also a great reason to have a few emulators installed and some older classic games you love which require no authentication or DRM at all to play.

The real mistake currently with the Steam Deck is if you own more than 1 you cannot be using them both at once. Sure it's a very isolated issue now, but when a Deck 2 comes out, if you don't find value in selling off the OLED Deck 1 or whatever, or find it still serves a purpose, it's damned annoying you can't be logged in to both Decks at the same time.

 

[Griffon]

It's alarming how many people seem to be fine with offline mode only working if you set it to offline mode ahead of time. Why should users be expected to plan for every contingency for functionality that should *just fucking work*? There's no good reason why it doesn't.

Nah, you don't need to at all.

I've been on week long trips with the deck, didn't update shit, didn't set it to offline mode, never connected the thing to any wifi. It just worked and I could play all of my solo games fine.

OP obviously goofed up something (or his unit is borked in some way).

 

[thief183]

...So you con on vacation , I dunno, 2 weeks a year and you can't stay without you electeonic device? To me that is the problem, not the Steam deck.

 

[Tams]

I think the key is to put Deck in Offline mode before traveling and after all updates. Then it’s pretty good and I haven’t had many issues.

If you do not do that, it’s kind of crappy. It’s also a good idea to click through (in Steam) the games you are planning to play as it will ensure the cloud sync is there and Steam “acknowledges “ it.

Better yet, start the games before doing all of that in case there is any additional stuff that needs to be downloaded it.

From Windows side, ROG Ally works fine as well in offline mode. That includes GoG games which are even better for offline.

Any of the handhelds also run emulators like a champ without any internet access.

This has always been the case with Steam, and it's a shitty practice.

It's why I never buy anything in Steam if it's available elsewhere.

 

[Lucifers Beard]

Yeah that sounds bizzare, I take Deck with me on all kinds of vacations with no or shitty internet and everything works perfectly as long as I download whatever I want to play before leaving.

I play my Steam Deck on the train and in the car on longer journeys with no internet and have no problem with it. Not saying OP is wrong, just that is very unfortunate.

 

[Sentenza]

Just got back from a week on holiday with internet of dialup quality. I could download files of maybe 4-5 MB, but it would take the best part of a day and multiple disconnections.

Knowing this, and knowing how Steam Deck loves its bandwidth, I made sure to update it before I went away. Every patch, every shader update, until there was nothing left in the download queue.

I mean, no fucking shit: if you go in a place where the internet is slow, using it will be a miserable experience.

You weren't supposed to just "update everything before" since some stuff is receiving updates constantly. You were supposed to put the device in offline mode so the updates would be postponed for when you were back in the civilized world.

 

[Hohenheim]

Never had any issues with my Steam Deck (or Steam in general) when offline. Every game plays fine and syncs when back online.

 

[Kabelly]

I will say Bioshock 2 Remaster is broken af and just crashes in general all the time. I actually played a couple of months ago and it was a constant issue. It's also very known by other users. If you read the reviews you'll see it's an issue for everyone.

 

[Filben]

OP said all the games were updated before going offline, OP said offline mode was being used.

Personally, I had an issue once with an unstable internet connection while booting up the SD after I logged out of my account; while it was booting it tried to sign in again but couldn't and kept being in a loop, preventing me from switching to offline mode. No hard-reboot or anything helped. It started working again when the connection was stable again but it took roughly 30 minutes.
Sometimes I had trouble with re-connecting to the Steam services after being in offline mode.

However, all of those issue were like over a year ago and maybe it has gotten more stable with recent updates, but I switched over to using airplane mode or disbale WiFi instead of offline mode. Seems more reliable to me.

As others have mentioned, having emulators on it is a good idea. They don't need updates and especially old console emulators draw so little power you can play for 6 hours before recharging is needed.

 

[Warnen]

It’s even worse without power. Like a big fucking brick.

 

[Oppoi]

It’s even worse without power. Like a big fucking brick.

Well duh...

 

[THE DUCK]

I think op should post a new thread saying I was wrong, poor casual browsers now thing buying a steam deck is a bad idea.....

 

[Wildebeest]

If you don't want the store with weird online/offline behaviour, crazy invasive DRM and anticheat, and launchers that launch launchers to launch launchers, then go with gog. Which has its own problems.

 

[calistan]

...So you con on vacation , I dunno, 2 weeks a year and you can't stay without you electeonic device? To me that is the problem, not the Steam deck.

By that impeccable logic, posted on a games forum no less, there's no point in any portable games machine.

You can't be away from your device while commuting on the train? You can't be away from your device while your wife is watching Love Island? You can't be away from your device while you take a shit?