Steam never had always online (obviously this excludes online games like TF2). Steam has (ignoring offline mode here to honor your statement that it was broken for years) "check at start", i.e. the moment the game starts you must be online. Nothing else. Always online is what Ubisoft tried with Assassins Creed 2, i.e. the game communicates all the time with the server and if the connection dies you cannot play anymore.