There's nothing you can do.

Is that ResNet which is fucking everything up? I've got no advice but plenty of sympathy.

Talk to the university's network guy

I've just started at UCLAN, and it seems that it's pretty standard for universities to block gaming ports, (no tmn or steam for me). And here at least, even if you ask the technicians they wont do anything about it. However I am doing Games Development, and we are encouraged to play games as much as we can, so I might talk to my lecturer and see if he can swindle something.

There's not much you can do about a proxy, aside from trying a VPN connection if you know someone with a fast connection outside the Univ that would be willing to run a VPN server, which may be a bit too complicated to setup.   Best bet would be to talk to the college IT department to see if they would be willing modify the proxy setup to allow steam.

Or you could pay for UMTS internet.

Do you have the games on your computer? If so, can't you just launch them in offline mode? Or do you not have them currently installed?
 
I'm not enough of a tech wizard to know what type of workaround you would need to get Steam working on your school's internet.

If you're on ResNet you're fucked. If not, call IT. Hopefully they'll be better than mine, I was laughed off the phone when I asked for help. Fuckers.

I'm sorry dude, but there's probably nothing you can do. You can try contacting someone in the IT department of your university, but chances are they aren't going to be willing to adjust any of their port blocking/capping/throttling.

Just ask the tech guys at your uni. They will be happy to open up the ports I bet.
 
Otherwise, you might consider getting wireless internet on some 3G network near the school. Wouldn't cost much since you'd just be running games through it.

The DL/UL rate on the 3G cards suck.

" Do you have the games on your computer? If so, can't you just launch them in offline mode? Or do you not have them currently installed?  I'm not enough of a tech wizard to know what type of workaround you would need to get Steam working on your school's internet. "

It's pretty obvious what you have to do.... quit uni

Here's another thing you can do - Download the same games that you thought you had purchased through bittorrent, and then you can play them without having the hassle of maintaining a constant link to Valves' validation server. I don't know why people think they own games when they buy them from Steam - that's just an illusion.

Wow that fucking sucks.
 
You're making me reconsider not going into higher education, even after how shitty this year has been in my job.

" @Dragonseer: The only problem with that is that most unis monitor that kind of stuff. If they notice a large amount of downloading coming from a certain area, they will disable your connection and check for any unlicensed software.   A buddy of mine got busted that way.     

 EDIT: You should be able to just launch steam in offline mode and play single player games through that. But if your planning on buying any games or play them online your pretty much fucked. "

 "My understanding is that you need to be online first for offline mode to work.  They only call it that so you feel better, but it's completely misleading.  Last time I checked you cannot power on your machine with the internet disconnected and run any Steam game.  If you could then I wouldn't hate the service so much. "

Download a "No-Steam" patch for your steam games, but that still doesn't solve your multiplayer problem :(
 
Live at home? :D

The way offline mode works is that you have to run the game once online (and after every time it gets patched) to run it offline.