How can I use Steam without connecting to Steam's servers?

I'm not trying to hack anything here. To clarify my question, I'll give you the situation.

I'm an engineer who is also an avid gamer. Where I work, we get downtime from time to time where we engineers are basically just sitting and waiting for something to do. During this time, our boss (who is also an avid gamer) allows us to bring our laptops and connect to the company network.

The problem we have run into is that we cannot connect to the Steam servers because of the company's firewall. We can connect to Origin with no problem and even download games from it, but we can never access Steam's servers. We have tried a few things to get around it, but nothing successful so far. I guess what I am looking for is some way to get access to Steam's servers the same way I can access the Origin servers.

Solution 1:

I believe your problem can mostly be circumvented by using Steam's offline-mode.

You say you have the game on "your laptop". I assume this is a personal laptop you can take home from time to time.

Here's what you do. In your home, with unhindered access to Steam, download the games you want and start them once. This way Steam can verify your right to run those games at least once. After this, put Steam to off-line mode. It will remember the verifications you did (for limited time, a couple of weeks, according to @badp) and you should be able to use the laptop and its Steam installation to play the games without needing to connect to the Steam's server.

Depending on the game, you may even have the game online without needing to connect to Steam's servers.

Solution 2:

Other than contacting the firewall's administrator and whitelisting Steam servers there's not much you can do. As suggested in comments below you can connect to Steam using proxies.

I know this doesn't solve your problem, but maybe it will be sufficient to someone else. I had the same problem with my University, where Steam logon server was blocked. A friend of mine found a workaround that surprisingly worked:

• When at home, connect to Steam and log in.
• Put your notebook in sleep mode.
• Power on the notebook at work.

Steam should be connected, games can be downloaded and you can chat with friends, but all games using steam servers (eg. Counter Strike etc.) won't be playable. Nevertheless, it's still more than you could do before (unless they fixed it somehow).

Solution 3:

I had this problem in my University. I simply connected to my 3G on the phone and logged into Steam there. It doesn't consume a lot of data just to log in and authenticate your game to start. Don't expect to play online games though. Even if you have fast 3G/4G connection the latency will still be a problem.

Look on Google how to turn your phone into a WiFi hotspot according to your phone's model and system. Good luck with the games friend!