I have been playing Skyrim in offline mode for months. I went into on line mode in steam and it started to download some update which i believe is the texture pack(5,718mb) i paused the download and now when i try to start the game i get..Unable to play game in offline mode.

Once an update/download has started, you need to finish the update/download in order to play the game or use the tool. It's like that in offline mode and online mode.

That's how it's worked for years and it explicitly says that under the info about offline mode about how to enable offline mode on Steam: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555

If you don't want the texture pack tied to your account anymore, contact Steam support and ask them to remove it. Also, the pack is 3 GB, not 5+ GB. That's about the size of the vanilla Skyrim files if I'm remembering right. Meaning, it doesn't detect the files are valid for some reason or another from the sounds of it.

Thanks for the replay ..well its gona cost me 10 bucks to download it all anyway..im on mifi with a 5GB data plan and anything over the 5GB coast me 10 bucks per 1GB..thanks again.

Can i delete ..the high resoulotion texture pack.NCF from the steam files?

I'd advise against it, it might redownload. The best way to make sure it won't is to contact Steam Support and ask them to remove it from your account.

I have the auto update turned off on steam also..i guess steam has more control over my game than i do and i bought the CD of Skyrim..lol...just a little rant sorry.

That setting means update on game launch instead of the background. It's not well named, but that's been confirmed as not a bug by Valve.

Well now steam is updating its platform so i have to wait for that now...lol.

The think the download that is downloading is a resoulotion pack and Creation kit update.

Updating is 5,747MB= 5.6GB

I sent a message to steam support so now i guess we wait.

Still havent heard anything from Steam Support..cant play game or nothing..it says now its download size file is 8724MB and i did a complete remove and reinstall of steam and Skyrim off of my skyrim CD. As long as Bethesda is connected to steam i will never buy another Bethesda game .

Be patient. It takes time for them.

Also, no need to supply updates this frequently and please keep the Steam ranting to a minimum. This isn't the place for it.

And where exactly would be the place to rant about it other than the Developers Forum that decided to implement the third party software usage - if not their Forum ?? This is the best place to rant about it since it at least has some chance of being read by the developer and if enough of it is posted perhaps they will seek other methods instead of using that third party in the next release !

Maybe in the dedicated thread created for it, perhaps?

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1359009-unofficial-steamdrm-discussion-27

I found this little bit of info on steam updates and it may seem to relate to my problem.

Steam updating works like this:
- Steam deletes all files which will be patched
- Steam re-download updated files

This is why Steam patches are so big and why you can't play after updating began and is not finished yet.

You can do manual backup (copy/pack game folder), but game is not complete if updating is not finished.

That's old info. Steam has supported delta changes for a while, now.

I also found out today that all patches available for Skyrim equal about 8.5GB so that maybe why download is so big.


"if you want all patches and expecially the HD texture pack 1 and 2 it's going to be someting like 8,5 gig."

Thanks for your time...subject closed ..i have a remendy.

No they don't. The game is 8.5 GB. The patches total to a few hundred MB at most.

You have something else going on there. Have you tried refreshing clientRegistry.blob?

Yes i have tried refreshing clientRegistry.blob.

Well the HD pack alone is more than a few hundred MBs - so since he deleted everything and started over and they are still registered to his account ( only by contacting Steam directly can you delete these from the account) - 8.5GB is probably about correct (since it will also redownload the entire game instead of using the DVD unless you specifically tell it to use the disk !)

The pack is 3 GB. It's not a patch, though. I've said all that, though.

I was referring to the fact that he said all the patches were 8.5 GB. It's highly possible I'm getting lost here, but time will tell.

Very possible as dealing with Steam and it's methods of updates etc. can be confusing enough to start with (ie. are the updates inclusive or does it download each one overwriting as it goes - since not each update changes each file but some are changed by more than one - and rather than update individual files in a BSA it redownloads the entire BSA) and since it downloads everything secretly there is no way of knowing what has been changed unless you keep a backup to compare files after the fact (which is made difficult since they do not warn you it is going to update !)

Thankfully AT&T hasn't yet implemented any cap in this area and with an 18Meg downstream connection even the large downloads are pretty quick so not really a concern but still would like a bit more control on this end instead of being forced to accept Steams idea of what files I should be using ( esp when it comes to it rewriting my ini files everytime it updates instead of keeping the changes made and only changing those settings required by the update - since this game requires quite a bit of time be spent tweaking the config files to your specific system and each update resets everything to default )

Well i fixed the problem and the solution was....I deleted Steam and Skyrim completely...wiped out evey folder and file i could find..no more problems ..i'll just go back to playing my Quake games and Doom games.

Thanks to everyone for there time and efforts.

OK all here is steams answer a mod may want to copy and paste this and pin or add it to steam updates as i have seen several post about this same subject.....................

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

The option to disable automatic updates does not disable the requirement for Steam to install the latest updates before launching your game. This option will only allow you to delay the update until you next choose to launch the game.

There are no options for running Steam games without all necessary updates.

If you have any further questions, please let us know.