I always thought you had to be online to start a game the first time so it can be activated on Steam or something. I only have hearsay on this, but I thought that was a general complaint about Steam.

I never had to be online to run a game for the first time. And I do it quite a lot. Maybe some games require activation, but I never had such problems.

I always download a bunch of games, go to offline mode, turn of my PC, go visiting my parents, turn on my laptop without any inet connection and run steam.

Game installs then DirectX and some other crap and runs fine.

That anti-steam complaint may come from the... very beginning of steam. When you had for example Half Life 2 on disc, you had to be online in order to install it, because you had to redeem your key on steam (add it to your steam account), so you couldn't install Half Life 2 from disc being completely offline.

I think this complaint is still valid if you'd like to install your game from disc for the first time - you have to be online to activate your key.

Yea, that's why in my original post I comment about regret limiting myself, but then to be honest, I don'y have enough time to play my back-log from my old physical copy and gog games, let alone all the games not on GOG that I want to play.

They do require activation for every install, but it's either activated automatically at the end of the download for "pure download" or during the mandatory "patch" download for retail version. Just because it's somewhat "hidden" and doesn't popup a big activation windows doesn't means that it's not there.

There is no way to install a game, restore a Steam backup, without being online at least once. Except for the few "DRM-Free" games of course.

And what's the problem if you have to download the game anyway? Once download is complete I go to offline mode and install and play my games without any problem.

So what's the problem actually?

The question was not whenever there was a problem or not but whenever or not there was a mandatory activation for every install.
Steam automatically install the game during the download, I fail to see how you actually manage to "install" it afterwards. We are talking about Steam not Gamergates,

You can call it activation or "download completion check", it doesn't matter from user's perspective in a slightest way and doesn't affect him...

And there was a big deal discussion with "your games have to be activated before you play, omg it's so terrible!" I could never understand.
omg... if you actually bothered to read any posts in this thread, you'd know that I'm talking about mandatory DirectX , .NET and other installations before first game launch, because people said you have to do all that while being online (and that you have to run game at least once in online mode to go to offline mode for that game) which is simply not true.

Steam forces you to be online in order to download your games.... The basterds!

I suppose the complaints have more to do with the impossibility of installing and playing a game without being online once rather than whenever or not the online activation is visible.

Well, if you actually bothered to read your post, the one I was answering to, you would have known that I was talking about the "...I go to offline mode and install and play my games without any problem. " part in which you don't mention anything about DirectX or C++ redistributable.

You don't understand. It's a matter of principle. Because, that's why!

Because I don't feel a need to fucking ellaborate in my every fucking post.

Everybody understood what I meant. Except you.

In the context following his initial post it makes perfect sense what he said. Maybe you shouldn't cherry pick a sentence and then hammer on it like there's no context.

I just brought the THQ bundle and I can't access my Steam library. It stuck at 33% Downloading Updates. The Basterds!

Are you sure it's stuck? Steam updates can take a few minutes.