[justinclift]

You can launch your games in Offline mode, which stops the need for having to go online/update/contact-the-Steam-servers-before-launch.

It's not totally straight forward though. You need to unplug your network device (or turn off wifi, etc) so the initial startup times out, and gives you the option to use Offline mode.

There might be a command line switch way to do that too, but I've never looked. ;)

[mastax]

There's also a menu option for 'Go Offline...'

[justinclift]

Yeah, but you need to be connected online first for that. eg go through the whole "Steam starts, updates itself, etc". :)