Speaking with dev support, some updates on the fully offline experience

[Xeawn ~Rafa~]

I've been speaking with dev support and performing more tests on the matter of a truly offline experience playing the game and wanted to provide an update.

But before I do I want to remind all of us as I see so many topics devolving into vitriolic pot shots at one another that at the heart of the matter, we ALL want to see a great game come out and run well, so let's try to remember we're all gamers here and all ultimately want a fun experience for everyone.

I've recorded a video with my testing that I'll upload later, but for those interested in the raw data now:

The game is supposed to be a smooth experience offline, the "checking entitlement" issue appears to be unexpected behavior. What's more, how it manifests is random. Personally last night I waited 15 minutes with no luck and other players reported 20 minutes with the same.

I did some additional testing today (all tests performed on an OLED Steam Deck):

Test 1: Game wouldn't load at all, known issue, closed and relaunched.

Test 2: With the wifi turned on the game loaded in and got to the main menu the way you would expect.

Test 3: Launched game with wifi turned off, hung on "checking entitlements" for 2 minutes 26 seconds before compiling cache and getting to the main menu.

Test 4: Launched game with wifi turned off, hung on "checking entitlements" for 4 minutes 50 seconds before compiling cache and getting to the main menu.

Test 5: Launched game with wifi turned off, game hung on "checking entitlements", turned wifi on and game loaded to main menu immediately. Confirmed contrary to last night I was not kicked out of the game when I turned wifi off mid-play.

Test 6: Launched game with wifi turned on, turned wifi off mid-play, confirmed contrary to last night I was not kicked out of the game once network was lost.

Test 7: Launched game with wifi turned off, hung on "checking entitlements" for 3 minutes 5 seconds before compiling cache and getting to the main menu.

Test 8: Launched game with wifi turned off, hung on "checking entitlements" for 5 minutes 49 seconds before compiling cache and getting to the main menu.


Something is bugged out with "checking entitlements" while offline that causes it to wait a random amount of time before it lets you get into the game. Could be a short wait, could be a long one, could be infinite.

The good news is that this IS a fixable problem; all the dev needs to do is add an option to skip checking entitlements while offline, or even better to simply not have the game perform this check at all when offline. How much of a lift that will be I couldn't tell you; I have a professional IT background but obviously I've not looked at their code.

I'm sharing these findings with the devs though, so hopefully an actual solution will be granted soon.

[Sintek]

This isn't the place to post things like this. The majority of people posting here don't have the game and never will.

[CigJuice]

Thanks for sharing! Keep up the good work!

[UdderJuice]

Those of us who actually want to play the game have problem installing a silly SDK that runs in the background.

[Xeawn ~Rafa~]

Update on my conversations with the dev support team, they found that if you put your system into "Offline Mode" and disconnect from wifi it completely skips the "checking entitlements" screen, however I shared with support that's not really a viablel workaround as it requires you (at least on the steam deck) to have internet to put it into offine mode in the first place.

For Deck users I don't know if you can use the additional step of going into Desktop Mode and selecting "offline mode" when you have no network connection, but I know in Game Mode if I'm not already online, "Offline Mode" is greyed out.

They've shared they don't have an ETA on a fix, but my findings have been passed to their engineers and they'll be looking into what they can do to resolve this issue.