You never have to truly deal with Origin when you buy the game aside from purchasing. After that, remove and use some removal tools to get rid of all its garbage and you never have to deal with it again. Even if you have to redownload the game.

I was going to purchase Sins Rebellion, until I saw that Steam is required. I just uninstalled all the games that require it, and got rid of steam. Not a fan of steam, no sir.

It's possible to disable this:

1. Open "settings."

2. Select tab #4, "In-Game."

3. Uncheck "enable steam community in-game."

4. Shift-Tab all day long.

cheers

P.S. For anyone trying to enable offline play:

1. Open "settings."

2. Select tab #1, "Account."

3. Uncheck "don't save account credentials on this computer."

4. Play offline all day long.

double cheers

...Last night I was unable to play any of MY games just because I had no internet at the moment, and Steam was unable to connect to the server to start in offline mode. WTF?

That happens to me occasionally; for some reason offline play is periodically disabled, and it's impossible to login to revert the changes.

Here's another gripe about steam: when login fails you are told to visit "www.steampowered.com."

Type that address though, and Steam redirects you to "store.steampowered.com."

That's right. When their service fails and you go looking for support on their website, they try to sell you more shit.

It reminds me of a far side cartoon: in the background is a broken window, in the foreground is a brick with the following note tied to it: "Brick thrown through your window? Call Ed's Glass 555-5555."

I've had viruses on my computer less obnoxious than steam.

Just like you have to be online to create account

As long as your login is saved in Steam client, you can open Steam in offline mode.

If you have the "store credentials" box checked, Steam will place some authentication information on your computer each time you start in online mode. You can restart in offline mode as long as that authentication is valid. It will expire eventually based on the length of time you've been offline and the number of times you've started the Steam client, but if you connect at least once a month it should never time out. What happens a lot more often is that a bad internet connection fails midway through the logon process, which also wipes the authentication. After this, you can't start Steam again without working internet.

What worked for me is to use the "Go Online"/"Go Offline" menu options instead of relying on Steam to fail over to offline mode. I haven't had any downtime since getting in the habit.