New Steam update, missing offline option

[Jito463]

So, just got a new Steam update pushed through, and it is quite annoying.  First thing that pops up is a "tutorial" about the 'Friends' list, which frankly I couldn't care less about.  My Steam account is about 99.999% offline in that regards, at least until today.  Now there is no longer an offline option that I can find.  I get 'Online', 'Away' and 'Invisible'.  That's it.  Anyone have experience with this new client (from using the beta perhaps), and might know how to set the 'Friends' client to offline without running the entire Steam client as such?  It would be appreciated.

 

I've got it set to 'Invisible' for now, but I'd rather just turn it off completely like I could before.  Barring that, time to start a harassment campaign against Valve to restore the offline functionality.  Worked last time when they released the Orange Box and tried to force everyone to use the overlay (another Steam "feature" I could live without).  Valve seems to think that everyone who uses Steam does so for a social experience, when that couldn't be further from the truth for me (and likely many others).

 

As a side note, I was saddened to see that Valve has apparently killed off the original forums in favor of that abomination knows as Discussions.  The original link redirects now, and I can't find any way to access the old forums anymore.

[DnL]

It seems to save your last status when you log back in. I had the option to login with friends offline, so I like that, but it seems that I need to log off invisible and that's really boring.

Also I need to turn off all notifications if I want the older offline mode...

Favorites and the extended information and options are great, but I don't know why did they remove the offline mode and "auto offline login".

 

It's possible to get the old status names through right clicking the steam client, at least in my language (if you have that enabled under setting->interface->taskbar preferences), but the offline status was really replaced by the "invisible" thing, so yeah that doesn't do much. You can get "busy" status that way tho still, but that's not really useful.

 

Also also, nicknames overwrite real names by default (?). It's possible to change that in the settings tho.

 

But it really seems that offline status is gone, which is bad.

[Jito463]

45 minutes ago, DnL said:

It seems to save your last status when you log back in. I had the option to login with friends offline

Unfortunately that was probably just a glitch on your side, because I had mine offline and didn't get such an option.

[DnL]

Interesting... Mine starts offline or invisible if I shut down steam with offline or invisible status, respectively. Yeah, "invisible" seems different from "offline" selected from the taskbar, since my status changes as well (from invisible to "online x seconds ago").

The option I was talking about was present in the old versions of the steam client (before this one) that basically let you choose between login in steam with online status or offline status and I had that set to offline since a long time ago. They removed it.

[TechyBen]

The GUI. The lines/blank space. My eyes. My brain. My hopes in humanity!!!

[Guest]

Invisible will be the equivalent of offline. 

[Jito463]

47 minutes ago, fpo said:

Invisible will be the equivalent of offline. 

That's probably what they thought, except that it's not.  Invisible means no one sees you as online, but you can still receive notifications.  Offline is just that, offline.  No notifications, no nothing.

[Syntaxvgm]

it's there for me. It turned the ads back on though. 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Jito463 said:

That's probably what they thought, except that it's not.  Invisible means no one sees you as online, but you can still receive notifications.  Offline is just that, offline.  No notifications, no nothing.

Isn’t that just better than offline? 

Also i used to get notifications when in offline mode before the update. 

[Egg-Roll]

5 hours ago, TechyBen said:

The GUI. The lines/blank space. My eyes. My brain. My hopes in humanity!!!

Wait how did you get this back?

 

All jokes aside I don't visit the forums and I think the group chat is a nice feature, next to that I do hate the new layout... Plus steam didn't use it's old location on my desktop giving me 2 steam icons...

[TechyBen]

Nothing wrong in that picture IMO...

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, fpo said:

Isn’t that just better than offline?

If you use chat, yes.  I don't.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

If you use chat, yes.  I don't.

You can block messages I think from specific users if that helps

[Ithanul]

I don't see the offline either in the chat.  But, it is still under Steam to set the whole thing into Offilne.

I did find this though.

So, probably you can just set that to all off.

[Amazonsucks]

On 7/24/2018 at 4:32 PM, Jito463 said:

So, just got a new Steam update pushed through, and it is quite annoying.  First thing that pops up is a "tutorial" about the 'Friends' list, which frankly I couldn't care less about.  My Steam account is about 99.999% offline in that regards, at least until today.  Now there is no longer an offline option that I can find.  I get 'Online', 'Away' and 'Invisible'.  That's it.  Anyone have experience with this new client (from using the beta perhaps), and might know how to set the 'Friends' client to offline without running the entire Steam client as such?  It would be appreciated.

 

I've got it set to 'Invisible' for now, but I'd rather just turn it off completely like I could before.  Barring that, time to start a harassment campaign against Valve to restore the offline functionality.  Worked last time when they released the Orange Box and tried to force everyone to use the overlay (another Steam "feature" I could live without).  Valve seems to think that everyone who uses Steam does so for a social experience, when that couldn't be further from the truth for me (and likely many others).

 

As a side note, I was saddened to see that Valve has apparently killed off the original forums in favor of that abomination knows as Discussions.  The original link redirects now, and I can't find any way to access the old forums anymore.

They are ruining steam with this kind of garbage. The old forums were great. Now its just that useless reddit style shit where you cant find any information. Idk why valve would deprecate forums with so much useful info. 

 

Its the further dumbing down of their atform. Now its trying to be discord and they doknt even have a proper forum to complain on.

[Paul Rudd]

Why does anyone need to go offline or invisible on Steam?

[Jito463]

3 hours ago, A Random Dude said:

Why does anyone need to go offline or invisible on Steam?

Allow me to turn that around, why do I need to be forced to stay online?  What purpose does that serve, if I don't use any of the online functionality?  Some of use just Steam because it's convenient, we couldn't care less about the "social" aspects of it and find those features utterly pointless.

[Cyberspirit]

On 2018. 07. 24. at 10:32 PM, Jito463 said:

So, just got a new Steam update pushed through, and it is quite annoying.  First thing that pops up is a "tutorial" about the 'Friends' list, which frankly I couldn't care less about.  My Steam account is about 99.999% offline in that regards, at least until today.  Now there is no longer an offline option that I can find.  I get 'Online', 'Away' and 'Invisible'.  That's it.  Anyone have experience with this new client (from using the beta perhaps), and might know how to set the 'Friends' client to offline without running the entire Steam client as such?  It would be appreciated.

 

I've got it set to 'Invisible' for now, but I'd rather just turn it off completely like I could before.  Barring that, time to start a harassment campaign against Valve to restore the offline functionality.  Worked last time when they released the Orange Box and tried to force everyone to use the overlay (another Steam "feature" I could live without).  Valve seems to think that everyone who uses Steam does so for a social experience, when that couldn't be further from the truth for me (and likely many others).

 

As a side note, I was saddened to see that Valve has apparently killed off the original forums in favor of that abomination knows as Discussions.  The original link redirects now, and I can't find any way to access the old forums anymore.

Hey, I found a solution for ya. Offline mode is still in but, for me, it was hidden. Here's how you can make it show up again:

 

All you need to do is go into your Steam settings then Interface and in there you need the Set taskbar preferences button.

Spoiler

In the Set taskbar preferences, you need to tick what status options do you want to be enabled. For me, Offline was disabled by default.

Spoiler

 

Hopefully, this helps.  

[Jito463]

18 minutes ago, Cyberspirit said:

Hopefully, this helps.

Nice, I'll verify this when I get home.  If it works, have an imaginary tray of cookies on me.  

[Paul Rudd]

7 hours ago, Jito463 said:

Allow me to turn that around, why do I need to be forced to stay online?  What purpose does that serve, if I don't use any of the online functionality?  Some of use just Steam because it's convenient, we couldn't care less about the "social" aspects of it and find those features utterly pointless.

@Jito463 Oh I didn't know you could use Steam without internet. How are you able to play games without updating them? How are you able to download games without internet? I'm always forced to update my games before I can play them. And while I use Steam online, I very rarely use it's social aspects. I respond to comments on my game reviews and I talk to devs about issues in certain games but that's about it. I just updated Steam and I agree that this new chat thing is pretty pointless when I don't do much communication with people on Steam.

[Jito463]

3 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

Oh I didn't know you could use Steam without internet.

You can, though this is more about the "Friends" functionality, rather than the full Steam client.

4 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

How are you able to play games without updating them?

Games don't have to be up to date to play, updating actually sometimes leads to further issues.

10 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

How are you able to download games without internet?

One could download them from another computer and transfer them over, but again I'm not talking about all of the Steam client being offline.

7 hours ago, Cyberspirit said:

Hey, I found a solution for ya. Offline mode is still in but, for me, it was hidden. Here's how you can make it show up again:

For the record, I just checked and verified, it works like a charm.  Nice catch.

[Paul Rudd]

16 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

You can, though this is more about the "Friends" functionality, rather than the full Steam client.

@Jito463 In that case, I go back to my original question. Why do you need to go offline or invisible in the friends functionality on Steam? What does it matter if you are online or offline if you don't use the friends functionality?

 

[Jito463]

41 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

@Jito463 In that case, I go back to my original question. Why do you need to go offline or invisible in the friends functionality on Steam? What does it matter if you are online or offline if you don't use the friends functionality?

 

To that question, I will simply quote myself already answering this above.

On 7/25/2018 at 8:06 AM, Jito463 said:

Invisible means no one sees you as online, but you can still receive notifications.  Offline is just that, offline.  No notifications, no nothing.

Just FYI, you don't need to tag someone if you've quoted them in your reply.

[Paul Rudd]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

Invisible means no one sees you as online, but you can still receive notifications.  Offline is just that, offline.  No notifications, no nothing.

@Jito463 You have yet to answer my question. If you don't use the friends functionality, no one can see you if you are online or offline. So why worry if you are online or offline? Or visible, or invisible. 

[Jito463]

2 minutes ago, A Random Dude said:

You have yet to answer my question

I have answered your question, what I can't figure out is why it makes any difference to you?  What purpose is there behind you pushing this so hard?  I despise social media, and I don't care for any of the "social" functions of Steam.  If that's not enough for you, tough.  That's all the answer I have for you.