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[Sappho]

GAH. My internet went down for a couple of hours today and I thought, that's okay. I have all these great new single-player games on Steam that I got from one of the Humble Bundles. I'm terribly addicted to Warlock.

Tried to open Warlock from the start menu. Steam tries to open. Steam tries to update, as it does every single time I open it. I get an error message. Steam needs to be connected to the internet to check for updates. Then it closes.

But I don't want to update Steam. I just want to run my single-player game that I paid for with money, offline. When Steam is open and my internet connection goes down, I CAN STILL PLAY MY GAMES. So why can't I open them if Steam is not open yet? Why does Steam have to update in order for me to simply open the program and access my offline games?

Is there something wrong with it? Every single time I open Steam it says it needs to update. Like, it says "restart Steam to update." Even if I open it, click "restart to install update," and it takes 2 minutes to do so, there's always a new message that it needs to restart again. Every single time. Like the update doesn't quite finish or something. Is there a bug here? I even tried uninstalling Steam and then reinstalling, and that only caused more problems.

I'm very angry at the moment. Is there something wrong with the program? I'm sure I remember being able to open Dungeons of Dredmor through Steam without the internet being connected. Now I can't. Why is Steam trying to update constantly? And Warlock doesn't care if I'm connected to the internet or not. I know I have to run it through the Steam system, but why is it refusing to open it just because the stupid program can't check for yet another useless update?

[Catastrophic lolcats]

The offline mode for Steam can be rather derpy at times. It's gotten better but it could still improve. Sometimes if you didn't exit Steam properly before going offline you won't be able to launch Steam without having to reconnected to the internet.
If you are connected to the internet and steam is failing to update try removing ClientRegistry.blob in the Steam main directory. It often gets corrupted and need to be redownloaded.

Some games do not use the DRM inherent in Steam and can be played completely outside of Steam and even if the directory is moved to another location. Prime examples of this would be all Paradox Development Studio games which (apart from EU4 which uses steamworks for multiplayer) just use steam as a distribution service.

There are some ways around the derpy offline mode such as "steam unlockers" but they're far from legal. The most popular from memory is one called Misteam. They do a lot of obviously unlegit things (such as unlocking the full steam library) but I vaguely remember using them to get around broken offline mode is semi-tolerated by Valve (I would be hesitant to trust my memory though). 
I wouldn't recommend it unless you're going months without internet or whatever.

[Sappho]

Thanks for the answer. I'll try deleting that file and see if it helps. Warlock is a Paradox game, so I know I should be able to play it offline. Maybe I'll try to access it directly next time. I'm not going to bother with a Steam unlocker program - I don't want to mess with all that. I bought my games legitimately and I don't want to believe that I'd have to use an illegal program just to access my own stuff. I hope it doesn't come to that.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Warlock was published by Paradox and not developed by them, therefore the game still uses Steam's DRM and must be played with Steam running (either online or offline).

If you're still having problems and can't find a solution online consider sending a steam support ticket to Valve now. Their customer service is abysmal and it can take weeks to get a reply.

[Sappho]

Hm. I deleted that ClientRegistry.blob file and the next time I opened Steam it was lightning fast! Maybe it was just a corrupted file, as you say. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully the problem is solved for now. Thanks a lot for the help.

[Mephisto]

ClientRegistry.blob has been the main source of Steam BS-ery since around the time of its conception. I would have thought they would have some competent people around that might potentially be able to have fixed it by now.

I'm having the same issues that Sappho was having. Hopefully this fixes it once I get home from work.