This steam process is a joke. please help

Greetings fans,

sorry another steam rant here. i know its going to cut piracy and all that corporate statements etc but for all the good its going to do the ultimate question is WHY CANNOT I NOT PLAY THE GAME!!

i was at my mums house at the weekend which has wireless internet. i bought the game, installed steam, verified it and got it working. brilliant. all straight forward. but now i'm back in my own flat i'm unable to even load fm 2012 upi click football manager and it loads steam up. but yet stays at the "updating steam" loading bar which never fills up. It then says "could not connect to the steam network!!"

okay thats fine. i dont want to connect to the steam network. i just want to play football manager!!!

so i click the "start in offline button" as has been advertised we can do once we install and verify the first time...but yet "STEAM ERROR!!!" is what i'm left with telling me it cannot connect to the network and it could be steam being offline or my internet connection.

Question time:

1) how do i fix this??

2) why am i unable to apparently play this without steam and being "online" even though apparently before hand i was told i could

3) if i'm having trouble and shenanigans off steam no doubt a minority of other people will. is it worth alienating more fans sigames for a few extra quid?? i'll say the cliche but true statement "i've bought your last 15+ copies of your game" (violin out) but i just WANT TO PLAY MY GAME!! WHY DO I HAVE TO SUFFER SHENANIGANS AND GENERAL CORRUPTION FROM BLOOMING STEAM!!! GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

any help or advice guys?? i have a russian game i want to continue so much

p.s tried restarting. internet is a joke dongle btw but i'm on good speeds on webpages so i dont know why steam isnt even loading up.

steam is amazing although i would say that having used it for over 5+ years now...

try deleting clientregistry.blob in steam folders and restarting (you will need internet connection)... once thats done, select go offline mode as its best to go into offline mode when still online...

apparently i have no steam login information stored on my computer and i'll be unable to use steam until i can connect to the internet again

which raises two questions:

1) where has my steam login in formation gone in the last 5 days...

2) i'm connected to the internet via dongle so why cant i connect to steam...

Apparently after having googled the problem my 02 internet dongle blocks steam from ever connecting. the question i have and what i would like an answer to is

why can i not play football manager 2012 in offline mode??? i click play in offline mode and it comes up "unable to connect to steam"

this is unworkable

You have to have set up offline mode (by allowing steam to store your login information locally on your PC) while connected to the internet. Without doing this, it has no way of verifying your logon, and offline mode will not work. This will be why you cannot use offline mode at the minute.

Read the FAQ on setting up offline mode: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279162-Football-Manager-2012-*OFFICIAL*-FAQ

P.s I play succesfully using a 3 mobile broadband dongle, you may wish to take up issue with 02 if they are blocking it as other network providers allow access...

You can connect from any other network, log in to Steam then go offline, you can play then without the need of connecting to the internet. Just save your log in details and then your good to go!.

Offline mode has to be turned on BEFORE you log off from the internet. From then on you can play offline.

Offline mode has to be turned on BEFORE you log off from the internet. From then on you can play offline.

That's not correct, you have to set up Steam correctly while on the net but once that's done it should offer offline mode if ever you don't have a net connection, making sure "don't save account credentials on this computer" isn't checked should be enough.

The way Steam starts if you're not online misles people, it says updating Steam when in fact it's searching for a connection, then nothing appears to happen for a while until it offers you offline mode.

After that (even if you clicked the FM12 icon initially) it just loads Steam and if like me you have win7 you can't see it unless you click the show hidden icons button.

You then right click on it and click FM12 which will launch.

It's very untidy and people will naturally get impatient and assume nothing's happening, it's certainly a procedure Steam need to get working much more intuitively.