Steam - Excessively Large Updates After Friends and Family Patch

[Sohaltang]

87/35 advertized as 75/30 for about 65$

 

[SMOGZINN]

If you are worried about you data cap why are you installing all these games? I have over 200 games on steam and have never had more then 5 installed at one time.

 

[mjd]

Comcast: 50/5 approx with some suspected throttling. Includes HD DVR and the lowest tier TV package which includes ESPN
$180/mo

It's COMCASTIC! 🙁

 

[Tweak155]

Comcast: 50/5 approx with some suspected throttling. Includes HD DVR and the lowest tier TV package which includes ESPN
$180/mo

It's COMCASTIC! 🙁

Dang... I did a Comcast package... $70/mo for 50/10 and like 100hd channels... doesn't include ESPN but I get Showtime & HBO. Have my own modem and the $70 includes the cable box right now.

Price only goes up $20 after the first year which isn't terrible, but I don't know if I'll keep it.

 

[Renob]

what is this "data cap" you speak of?

lol I will never have the time to play all the Humble B's and Steam deals in jump into ....

 

[irishScott]

Why uninstall games when you can buy a bigger hard drive? 😛

So the issue is hard drive space? Get a backup drive and this handy thing: http://www.overclock.net/t/969143/open-source-automatic-steam-backup-restore-tool

Compresses all of your steam to 7-zip and can automatically extract/restore them as well. After restoration you simply have to initialize the game (steam has to verify the checksums).

 

[Aikouka]

If you are worried about you data cap why are you installing all these games? I have over 200 games on steam and have never had more then 5 installed at one time.

I've been a Steam member for a long time, and these games have been installed over the course of years. Even though I have hundreds of games installed, updates have never been an issue until yesterday since the updates are usually only a couple hundred MBs with a few being larger.

Honestly, the only issue with having lots of games is having the room to store them. I use a 3 TB drive for Steam.

EDIT:

So the issue is hard drive space?

Nah, I just assumed that you were suggesting that I buy a game, play it and then uninstall it to save the space (and also avoid downloading updates). So, I mentioned that I leave games installed because I have a lot of storage space available for Steam to use.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I've been a Steam member for a long time, and these games have been installed over the course of years. Even though I have hundreds of games installed, updates have never been an issue until yesterday since the updates are usually only a couple hundred MBs with a few being larger.

Honestly, the only issue with having lots of games is having the room to store them. I use a 3 TB drive for Steam.

Well, now you see the problem with having all your steam games installed.

 

[shortylickens]

Nope. 3TB. I never uninstall.

 

[Nebor]

Nope. 3TB. I never uninstall.

Same here. I have all my games installed, even the ones I've never played and\or never will play. I don't like the little grey names.

 

[Aikouka]

Well, now you see the problem with having all your steam games installed.

No, actually I still don't. It isn't like I got burned because I had to download an update for many games. I took a huge bandwidth hit because a FEW games had ridiculously large updates. All you can see is TF2 with a 6.9GB update, but the rest of the completed updates are at the bottom. A few examples are The Witcher 2 with a 10GB update and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed with a 12GB update. That's 7.3% of my bandwidth allotment right there.

Nope. 3TB. I never uninstall.

That's what I use as well. I used to have a 2TB, but I upgraded as I was down to about 200GB free.

EDIT:

I'm actually curious how big some of these other game updates are. It seems that a lot of my large AAA games are the ones with the large updates. I think Max Payne 3 is the second largest download that I've seen on Steam (disregarding anything with a ton of DLC) as it's around 26GB. I think Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II is #1 at 29GB.

 

[SMOGZINN]

No, actually I still don't. It isn't like I got burned because I had to download an update for many games. I took a huge bandwidth hit because a FEW games had ridiculously large updates. All you can see is TF2 with a 6.9GB update, but the rest of the completed updates are at the bottom. A few examples are The Witcher 2 with a 10GB update and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed with a 12GB update. That's 7.3% of my bandwidth allotment right there.

And you will probably continue to get burned because you have so many games installed that the odds of one haveing a large update is pretty high.

It is simple math. If Steam has large updates to 1% of their games a month, and you have 200 games installed you will expect 2 large updates a month. If you only have 10 games installed you expect one large update every 10 months. The more games you have installed, the more large patches you are going to get.

 

[shortylickens]

Shogun II is 32 gigs.

 

[Anteaus]

Tips to control data use.

1. After download games, use the backup tool for long term storage. Steam has a very good backup tool. I make it a point to backup a game immediately after downloading it for the first and stashing it on an external drive. It helps me keep my Steam libriary lean while letting me install without it counting agains my data cap. Also, it is a good idea to do a new backup after a large patch.

2. Turn off autoupdates for all games. You'll need to do it for each game. That way you update on your terms.

3. Ditto for Cloud. There is a master control for that also.

3. If data cap is tight, then play in offline mode. Just remember that you'll need to have started a game in online mode before it will work in offline mode.

 

[Aikouka]

And you will probably continue to get burned because you have so many games installed that the odds of one haveing a large update is pretty high.

It is simple math. If Steam has large updates to 1% of their games a month, and you have 200 games installed you will expect 2 large updates a month. If you only have 10 games installed you expect one large update every 10 months. The more games you have installed, the more large patches you are going to get.

The problem is that your postulating does not match my experience at all. In my experience, you don't normally get hit that hard with update size -- even with hundreds of games. Normally, the only reason I get large updates are when a DLC comes out and I already own it. An example would be when the new DLC for Bioshock Infinite came out as I believe that was 4GB.

I wasn't terribly clear in my original post, but I didn't really make this thread to talk about data caps (even though I specifically mentioned it) or how many games one should install on Steam. I made it because I was bewildered as to why I was getting such ridiculously large updates for these games. I haven't seen any news about these games receiving any updates from the developers, and normally, updates aren't 50% or more of the game's install size. I will admit that if I didn't have a data cap, I probably would have just let all the updates go through. Just imagine the craziness if I posted a thread about 100GB+ of updates! 😛

 

[IVIX1]

So, I updated Steam earlier tonight with this new Friends and Family thing, and a few games said they needed to update. Eh, not a big deal, so I let them start. I came back a little bit later, and this is what I saw...

😱 63.5 GB USED 😱

There goes over 20% of my data cap in less than a few hours.

I have that same thing happening. I actually searched google looking for this happening to other people and (thought I've only looked a small amount of time) this is the first reference I've seen.

My steam, I dont exactly download a whole lot of stuff, in fact when I reinstalled win 7 with new components in Nov 13 I didnt even install alot/most of the games I have on steam...

...Now I have a cap at 2.5 or at best 2.6 for everthing. Before whatever change happened I was reaching 4.5, usually around 3.2.

I would like to know if this is an isolated instance, or an all encompassing situation though....(I'll keep looking and post back if I find anything worthy of anand I'll post)

 

[Agent11]

Data cap? Hahaha. . . Ha.

Get a better ISP dude!

I have Comcast, I get free Norton, and enforcement of data caps is suspended currently. This month I have used 74 gb, and that is with a computer, laptop, and tablet, as well as a phone on my router, Steam doing it's thing, streaming movies, and constant downloading going on everywhere. Some months I am sure I probably went over whatever their limit is, however I have not been billed, or received any notices. I am not too happy with Comcast's rates, however if you own your own router and modem they are alright.

Google Fiber is probably the best, 1gb up and down, and hardest to get, being in only a few cities. I have no personal experience with other fiber optics.

 

[circusslaughter]

The only issues I have with Steam is every time I log on it, EVERYTHING HAS TO UPDATE AND I GET ON EVERYDAY!

My internet company has a 300gb cap with 50mbps download and there is no overage fee so this might be why I have never ran into this problem.

 

[alcoholbob]

I once used over 1TB/month for like 3 straight months and thought Comcast was gonna cancel my service...didn't happen, so I kept burning away at the bandwidth 😀

 

[circusslaughter]

I once used over 1TB/month for like 3 straight months and thought Comcast was gonna cancel my service...didn't happen, so I kept burning away at the bandwidth 😀

Highest I've ever hit was 100gb...

 

[Aikouka]

Data cap? Hahaha. . . Ha.

Get a better ISP dude!

I have Comcast

Psst... we have the same ISP.

http://customer.comcast.com/help-and-support/internet/data-usage-plans-expansion/

Keep in mind that I'm not really complaining about the data caps. Even if I didn't have one, I'd still probably have posted this thread because the amount of data being downloaded for updates is extremely uncommon. To give you an idea, I've currently got a few updates paused still, because they're so large. Max Payne 3 is trying to download 30GB.

Oh, but you know what the best part about Comcast's cap is? I can't find my data usage anywhere on their site. It used to be under... Users & Settings I think, but even when I saw it there in November, it always said 0GB used. Now, that Comcast help page above linked me to my account's My Services page, but there's nothing there that I can see that will show me my usage.

EDIT:

I think I'm finally going to change the title and some of the original post to reflect the actual meaning of the thread. Too many people worrying about data caps when the problem is Steam wanting to download 100GB+ of updates!

I have that same thing happening. I actually searched google looking for this happening to other people and (thought I've only looked a small amount of time) this is the first reference I've seen.

I found a post on the Steam forums about something similar, but I'm not entirely sure if it's the same problem.

 

[darkewaffle]

For their Source games especially, they'll often show drastically larger download sizes than they actually pull down IIRC. Dunno why.

 

[KaOTiK]

For their Source games especially, they'll often show drastically larger download sizes than they actually pull down IIRC. Dunno why.

Reason being, if you already have a source game downloaded it will only download the assets for the game you are currently downloading. But if you don't have any sources games already downloaded it will take that entire size it quotes you at the start.

 

[Aikouka]

I only got the chance to check with Max Payne 3, but the reason why I had such a large "update" there was that Steam deleted my content for some reason. During my Google searching, I saw another user mention that, and lo and behold, I had nothing but an install script file in my directory. Thankfully, I was able to copy the content back, and my download dropped from 30GB to 3.3GB. I checked a few other games that were still in the queue with 1GB or less of updates, and their folders weren't empty.