Nope, this is something different. I booted up Metaphor: ReFantazio, and it just about made it to the main menu before telling me I needed to be in offline mode, but you can’t explicitly put the device in offline mode if you don’t have an internet connection, funny enough. Fortunately I was on an Amtrak with Wi-Fi, but I shouldn’t have needed to do that. As far as I can tell, the reason I needed to authenticate the game again is because the Deck ran a “validating install” step on boot, but I have no idea when that step is going to happen, and once again, I shouldn’t have to plan ahead for being offline.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Sounds like a game bug.
“…” button --> Airplane mode.
When you do something to bork the game data. It’s either user error or a bug but definitively not regular behaviour.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
It’s not a game bug; that’s Steam’s DRM.
Airplane mode is not offline mode. I found that out explicitly this year due to how Ubisoft’s launcher interacts with playing offline in Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. Offline mode is found from the Internet menu in the Steam Deck interface and is very much not the same thing as just not having an internet connection, as much as that would make sense.
I didn’t break any game data. This is an OS level feature, and it just does it sometimes on boot. I’m glad you’ve never been inconvenienced by these things yourself, but this is the intended functionality.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Funny how you got hit by that on an domestic train trip and I traveled abroad several times and not got that weird behaviour even once. I simply never use offline mode. On the plane I was in airplane mode and when not on the plane I was on hotel wifi, personal phone hotspot, or just not connected to any wifi. Steam also never just out of the blue validated my game data. Must be a problem on your end.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 week ago
No, it’s really just a luck of the draw thing on boot.