It was working for the last few days, now, all i see is that steam says its preparing to launch and it goes on forever and ever and ever and etc, PLEASE HELP.

Yep, I share your frustration. My Steam launch screen has been up for over an hour now.

While waiting I tried searching the forum for "Steam" but found I had to be a registered user to do that. Register just to do searches? Why?? I can understand a registration requirement for posting. (Oops, a sub-topic such as I complain about below.)

My Network icon in the lower right tray shows only occasional activity. If the launch included patching I would expect continuous activity.

I play Steam's "Team Fortress 2" and do not experience this kind of issue. At least the launch screen tells me that it's "Updating TF2".

Replying to your post because it is the one I found that is the most relevant to my problem. The others I checked diverge into other sub-topics. Maybe a veteran of this forum can point us to a post that addresses the specific issue.

Bottom line - when I start a game that I bought on CD/DVD I expect "instant loading" after the game has been "activated" by whatever means. After activation there should be no further need for an Internet connection when starting the game. What if my ISP has an outage? Why should the game not load for me, who purchased it on a CD/DVD?

Other PC games I have played offer a "Check for Updates" option on the startup screen which is good enough for me. It gives me the freedom to choose whether to update or not.

I was so looking forward to playing Skyrim but will gladly remove the game and go elsewhere for an RPG if this issue is not resolved. And never buy another Bethesda product that needs a connection to Steam in order to play.

Ideas, anyone?

Same here.

I just saved and quit the game to view the forum and now it will not restart.

Jeez, the Steam soap opera continues. What a TES game this has been.

They really messed up didn't they?

Have you tried starting steam first and switching steam to offline mode?

Things like this is way I never buy digital purchases...

i hope they fix the issue with Steam this is a serious issue, not being able to access something you paid for.

delete the skyrim.exe and reinstall happend to me yesterday

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6218-USFX-5568

If you're still having trouble, I'd suggest looking through Steam's support pages.

An active internet connection is not required to play Skyrim, only to activate the game. Put Steam into offline mode (which you have to be online for, but you will be to activate it anyway) and play.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGCB-2555

Just restarting steam fixed it, I didn't need to go to offline mode but now I know about it I'll keep that in mind in case of future issues.

Cheers. :foodndrink: