[Rategbee]

I feel for Will. While a lot of people have provided 'solutions', none of them are applicable to the exact problem Will is having, including the one above this.

Everyone knows you can play Steam games offline, hell you've been able to for over 10 years. However, if the Steam client decides it wants to be updated, you're doomed, even if you have played the game you want 10,000 times previously. As soon as Steam gets a message that it has an update pending, in order to be able to launch it offline, that update must be installed otherwise you can't do anything, even offline.

Steam checks for updates when you run it, if you aren't connected, it cannot and does not check. When it does find an update, it's downloaded and installed straight away, and then asks you to restart the client. So i don't see how that could affect it, unless you don't bother restarting when instructed, or somehow stop/interrupt the update?

EDIT:

I can honestly say i've never had this problem, probably because i always keep it updated and restart Steam when it asks etc..