Everything is great about digital distribution until something starts going wrong. Some Steam users in Germany found this out the hard way today as they discovered they just couldn't connect to the network. That's annoying enough in itself, sure, but they also found several games just wouldn't play offline.

Of course, things like Call of Duty and Counter Strike are practically useless without an online mode, but the single player for the former was blocked anyway. On top of that, single player games like Fallout: New Vegas were completely unplayable as well. Steam representatives posted to the official forum to let people know that they're aware of the issue and that things will be sorted as soon as possible.

It's times like this that the "this wouldn't have happened in the good old days" people come out and celebrate the fact that publishers (and platform holders) are still a little bit behind where they should be with problems like this. If you're going to run a digital distribution platform, you have to have contingency plans in place for when things go wrong.