Steam in offline mode?

eileenk

Hey all,
I have a polycade lux machine installed in a rental property, and I have a problem with Steam, which is where I have my most popular games like Pac-Man, Galaga, etc. I'm there only a few weeks during the year, and when I am Steam usually has done some random update and sometimes it has logged me out and I need to re-input my password. I'd rather not give my password to renters, so I use Steam in offline mode and I can't get updates anymore that are going to screw up my library.
Yay!
Unfortunately, something I learned after doing this was that Steam asks you on startup if you still want to be in offline mode, which would also be really bad for renters. Is there some way to automatically select the "start in offline mode" button, even if it's running a macro or script or something???

Thank you for all your help!
TL;DR How do I start Steam in offline mode every time automatically upon seeing the popup

admin

Hey @eileenk sorry for the late reply here. Unfortunately this is not possible - Steam only allows itself to be in "offline mode" for up to 2 weeks, then it will require you to connect to the internet again in order to keep playing. In general, we don't recommend using Steam for "commercial" use cases like this, due to these types of nuances.

If you have the ROM file for the games you mention, that method of running those games will work seamlessly without needing any internet access.

Tranton

Does that mean there is no commercially safe way to have steam games on your polycade? Even if you are in Kiosk mode?

Will the games still play once they are added to the pilycade library if you are not logged into steam?

admin

We generally don't recommend using Steam in commercial environments, unless you are constantly monitoring the machine. Steam will do software updates and other things that can't be seen by the user trying to launch the game, so the user will just think the system is broken and taking forever to launch the game while Steam is updating in the background.

You must be logged into Steam to play any games installed via Steam.