I need to allow Steam for someone's Parental Controls'd account, I've tried allowing steampowered.com and https://steampowered.com and allowing the copy of Steam.app in the applications folder. Also, I recursively changed Steam.app to 777 such that this user doesn't have issues with Steam Update complaining about admin access. This was the easiest way to do this though now anyone can edit it, I know, but all users of this machine are trusted and remote login (SSH) is very carefully disabled. Steam.app is allowed through the Parental Controls prefpane as the admin. Also, upon first run (and subesquent, post-update runs) of Steam, I allowed 'steam', 'ipcserver', and a few other little bits as dialogs popped up.
Previously, I temporarily disabled all parental controls on this account, logged in, opened and logged into Steam, downloaded all wanted games, and it Steam -> Go Offline; upon re-enabling Parental Controls and logging back in to the user account I got a 'Could not update – Updates must happen when in Online Mode, not Offline Mode' or some such message.
How can I get Steam to run? I'd like to be able to run it in Offline mode (or Online Mode, but this is not required) with parental controls set to whitelist both websites and applications. I'd like to be able to every now and then disable parental controls, open Steam in Online Mode, and download new games in this account, but then be able to drop Steam back to Offline Mode such that I can re-enable Parental Controls without breaking it.
Best Answer
Steam has an automatic updating system. Games, and even the steam client will update automatically, if you are connected to the internet.
What seems to be happening to you, is that one of the games (or the actual client) has registered its intent to update, but it cannot, due to offline mode being enabled.
Try enabling online mode, and updating everything. This should negate the need for an update, and fix the problem.
However, if I have read your question wrong, this method will probably not work.