If you launch a game through Steam and there’s an update available for it, then Steam will force the update before it will run the game. Some games can be run by navigating to its install directory and running the executable directly, that should bypass any updates but will not work for all games.
Oh god, I used to work IT for a company that had a European office so users getting documents set to A4 was not unusual. The problem came when they tried to print one of those documents and the office printer would sit and complain that it didn’t have any A4 available and wouldn’t print anything in the queue until that was fixed. And of course users had no idea there was any difference between letter size and A4.