I recently moved house and I wanted to change ISP. I thought it was wise not to tie myself up with a 18 month broadband contract just in case I chose not to renew the lease for one reason or another. In this article I am going to share my experiences of “Gaming Offline”...Sit tight, this is going to be a long one.

The problems with being offline is “Digital Rights Management”. The whole point of this system is to prevent piracy, but history shows that all it does is create issues for legitimate gamers and doesn’t really affect pirates at all! That is a whole story on its own though… In short, DRM has been a bit of a menace for gamers that may not have a stable or sustained internet connection. (I am looking at you Diablo III) So how do you overcome the DRM demon?!

I will give GOG an honourable mention here, the growing library of DRM free games they offer is a real blessing for the offline gamer (their gaming client is still in beta at the time of writing, but this also works offline). Humble Bundle also host bundles that often have a DRM free option which can be installed and played with no activations or restrictions....So they came in handy!

Preparation is key to gaming offline. In recent years you will be hard pressed to find a game that doesn’t require some sort of online activation. The main thing to remember is that you need to make your preparations whilst you still have access to the internet. This does mean that if you are already offline and are looking to start gaming you may be out of luck (unless you download something from humble bundle at a friends house…). In my experience, you may have trouble installing a game you have previously backed up offline...even if it is in your library. 

Steam, Origin and uPlay all support offline mode in some capacity. Steam and uPlay have the most straightforward approach; You simply sign in*, download all the games you want and then restart the client in “offline mode”** Job Done, have fun playing your games offline!*** Origin, however, had an issue. In the short term, everything was fine and I was playing Crysis just fine. One day however Origin wouldn’t start, I figured that this was some sort of offline time bomb to stop you from straying from the net too long. It turns out that it was the automatic updates that were to blame. Buried in the Origin preferences you can decide whether you would like Origin to keep itself and your games up to date automatically. When a set amount of time passes, Origin will decide it’s time to update - It will obviously fail as you are not connected to the internet and as a result you cannot continue. Origin closes and takes your games with it. 

*   Make sure that you tick the box to keep you signed in and remember your username and password. Failure to do this means the client will ask for you to login...which you may have issues with. There is no point in risking it!

**  Make sure you launch each game before you actually go offline. This ensures that the game is fully up to date and it will also fetch any dependencies from the internet. 

*** Not all games work offline. A lot of F2P titles inparticular require dedicated online servers to work, even single player and games with bots. 

Is offline gaming any different to online gaming? Apart from the obvious lack of social features, friend lists and online multiplayer, not really. This does depend entirely on the games you are playing though. If you like Team Fortress, you are going to have a very rough time playing it on your own. I used the opportunity to play strong single player titles like Shadow of Mordor, Metal Gear Rising, Bioshock etc etc and of course Skyrim...again. One thing I did notice is that Steam was not tracking my game time. I must have squeezed in 30+ hours of Shadow of Mordor but if you look at my stats it says I’ve barely played it. Achievement mechanics also go out the window. (I have since found that achievements unlock randomly now I am back playing games online)

It’s not a bad experience at all..in fact it reminded me of a time when games weren’t connected to the net. No chat popups, no “bleep bloops” and no patches or updates. There were obviously signs that something was missing but the games were unaffected and I played happily (forgetting that whole Origin thing...and you could say that was my fault). 

I would rate my offline PC gaming experience as Good!

I have spoken exclusively about PC so far. I don’t spend much time on my consoles but I do fire them up from time to time. The disc based games on consoles still use older methods of DRM that do not require an internet connection, but does the console experience change? Here is a brief breakdown of my consoles and how they coped with being offline. 

Xbox 360: All the Mountain Dew and Doritos adverts are gone! obviously no friends lists or online multiplayer but the experience was fine. (The console is actually faster to startup and launch games.) Some of my Xbox Arcade titles refused to launch, apparently this is a rule Microsoft enforces and there is nothing you can do about it. Overall a good offline gaming experience...I am probably going to leave it offline!

PS3: At first glance, the PS3 looks no different. Doesn’t handle any differently either, all my games worked, even the downloaded titles. (Again, obviously no friends lists or online multiplayer) An excellent offline experience!

Wii U: This was an unexpected bump in my otherwise positive offline journey. The Wii U constantly prompted to check for updates when it had no idea if there were any (It does this when online too...but it realises stuff is up to date much quicker). There are ways around this, like launching games from standby via the gamepad...but what a faff. All my games were playable but everything took time and there were ugly error messages whenever the console realised it wasn’t online. A poor offline experience. 

In summary, gaming offline was not the headache I expected it to be. Consoles are largely unaffected and provided you have the opportunity to prepare on PC you will be fine. Online DRM is still there for PC, it probably will be for some time, but thanks to Steam, Origin and uPlay it is easily managed and is as unintrusive as possible. 

There are issues that I have not touched on here. Like what happens if the platform with all your games closes down? And thats because I hope I never have to answer that sort of question!

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