This is like a real kick in the teeth.

I bought the Collector's edition dvd of Fallout New Vegas (i.e. it wasn't cheap) and tonight I can't play my game because "Steam is offline".
That is so insulting, being treated like I am a hacker or criminal - I can't play my own legally owned, single-player, non-online software on my own pc for no apparent reason.

I hope there is a way to play this game without Steam being "online", because otherwise I will never buy another Steam game again. :sadvaultboy:

You should be able to play it with Steam offline. Did you already activate and install the game?

You need to connect to the Internet to "activate" the install, and possibly patch the game. Once that is complete you may set Steam to offline mode and play it normally. The DVD states that an Internet Connection is required for activation purposes.

I have been playing for days, it's activated & patched.

Suddenly tonight I am currently getting a message that the servers at Steam are too busy to handle my request when I try to continue playing my game.
Quite honestly if Steam can't handle the number of gamers it has then it has a major problem.

Anyway, I'm delighted to hear I don't need Steam to play, how to I do it?

You should be able to open the "Steam" menu in Steam and choose "Go Offline".

You should then be able to play without it connecting to the Steam servers.

Have you tried browsing to the game install directory and running "falloutnv.exe" from there directly? I think steam is getting hung up on trying to download the latest patch.

Open Steam window (where you view Store, Library, etc.). Click Steam->Go Offline. On popup, choose "Restart Steam in Offline Mode."

HTH,
Flytrap

You still need Steam loaded, but it doesn't have to be connected to the Internet. However if Steam was still in Normal Mode and detected a Fallout: NV patch then it will prevent you from going to Offline mode until the patch is downloaded. There are currently two patches... Do you have the correct version?

Awesome, thanks Showler. I'll play Offline until Steam sorts itself out.

@ charybdisjim, you're probably 100% right. Still its not acceptable that Steam can't cope with the patch, it is supposed to be able to cope with patches, otherwise it should not be in the on-line gaming business.