Why does download time count as playtime?

[DrummerJacob]

Steam has a policy that states you are entitled to a refund if you have played less than two hours and within a 2 week period of time, but the game itself appears to take 5-6 hours to download, at least for me with a 500mbps connection that usually runs at about 200-350mbps on hardwired ethernet.

That sounds like a scam to me. So by the time I would get it downloaded I have no recourse for the issues that im already having before the game is even able to open. That goes against the entire point of having a refund policy to begin with. Microsoft might as well just not sell this on Steam because its forcing us to use Xbox and some other launcher anyway.

Beyond that, while I gave it 2 hours to download it kept reverting backwards. It would say 27GB and then later 26GB and then later 30GB and then again later 26GB again.

Is there any explainable reason for this? Whats the logic in having my download go backwards? This is just a bunch of red flags.

[jbonesmd]

In the case of MSFS, because of the long download times for some users, Steam has been known to waive the 2 hour limit if you seek a refund as long as you have a legit reason for it. It's done on a case by case basis, but you have to explain your reasoning to them and they make a decision based on that. I believe the 2 week time period will still apply.

I recently completed a new build a few weeks ago and did a fresh install using a 500 Mbps connection and it took 55 minutes to download the standard edition at a average 350-400 Mbps download speed. Overall age and condition of PC along with available space and using SSD drives will help that. I have to say I was shocked at how fast the install went. No glitches whatsoever during install.

[DrummerJacob]

Originally posted by jbonesmd:

In the case of MSFS, because of the long download times for some users, Steam has been known to waive the 2 hour limit if you seek a refund as long as you have a legit reason for it. It's done on a case by case basis, but you have to explain your reasoning to them and they make a decision based on that.

Interesting. That's good to know thanks.

As for the backwards downloads, still not sure about that part. Never seen anything like it. Trying to stay motivated to play this but that's just the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Downloads don't go backwards. But my Flight Simulator download is and did it multiple times, then crashed my computer when I went to use my browser to search for help with why that would happsn and had to restart my PC twice and am now at 0% again with 114 minutes played.

At this point I don't think they deserve my money. This seems like a joke. I miss the old days of games when you just bought it, installed it and played it and didn't have all this extra ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to deal with.

[jbonesmd]

Hang in there until the new 2024 version comes out in November. They supposedly have re-engineered the entire download size and process.

[DrummerJacob]

Originally posted by jbonesmd:

Hang in there until the new 2024 version comes out in November. They supposedly have re-engineered the entire download size and process.

Yeah I noticed theyre already putting a new one out! :) Ill definitely be giving that one a try. Cheers

[ZombieHunter]

I just did a complete install of core and packages along with 3rd party aircraft and it took over 15 hours. 8 hours for the initial packages and around 7 for the updates and 3rd party stuff.

Extremely slow download from 75 to 150 but never over 150 on a near 500 connection. Ridiculously slow. The official core packages failed to get past 12 / 529 for decompression. It did download everything but it failed to decompress as usual. Then the 74 extra downloads in content manager got stuck 2 or 3 times. Absolutely terrible experience and awful coding that cannot seem to figure out how to share file access or resources across threads without a deadlock (my guess anyways).

The entire process is horrific and should have never been released in such a state.

As for the next version being different, I don't buy it. This one did not have to be as bad as it is. The original FSX did not have this abomination of an installation process nor content update system. We did not force this on them, they invented it, developed it and it all rests at their feet. It is the worst installation experience out of all of my 950+ games on Steam.

There is no excuse for 134 Gb to take 8 hours and another 85 Gb to take 7 hours. None at all. My largest Steam game besides FS 2020 sits around 100 Gb and it takes around 15 to 20 minutes total to download and install.

[★Macman★]

"Failed to Decompress". Could this be either Virtual RAM being OS Managed and therefore not allocated OR is overzealous ANTI-VIRUS restricting this?
BTW did you test your Upload Speed in case like mine it has had a Prioritisation for Gaming yet MSFS is not considered a Game Download due to not going via Steam Servers?

[ZombieHunter]

This fixed FS 2020 download speed in Windows 11 for me.
Run this from an admin command prompt:

netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

I didn't have any major issues with the sim till moving to Windows 11.

This does not seem to fix slow download speed within content manager.

[jbonesmd]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

I just did a complete install of core and packages along with 3rd party aircraft and it took over 15 hours. 8 hours for the initial packages and around 7 for the updates and 3rd party stuff.

Extremely slow download from 75 to 150 but never over 150 on a near 500 connection. Ridiculously slow. The official core packages failed to get past 12 / 529 for decompression. It did download everything but it failed to decompress as usual. Then the 74 extra downloads in content manager got stuck 2 or 3 times. Absolutely terrible experience and awful coding that cannot seem to figure out how to share file access or resources across threads without a deadlock (my guess anyways).

The entire process is horrific and should have never been released in such a state.

As for the next version being different, I don't buy it. This one did not have to be as bad as it is. The original FSX did not have this abomination of an installation process nor content update system. We did not force this on them, they invented it, developed it and it all rests at their feet. It is the worst installation experience out of all of my 950+ games on Steam.

There is no excuse for 134 Gb to take 8 hours and another 85 Gb to take 7 hours. None at all. My largest Steam game besides FS 2020 sits around 100 Gb and it takes around 15 to 20 minutes total to download and install.

In my earlier post I stated that with a 500 Mbps connection on a new virgin PC build it took an hour to install the standard edition at a average of 350-400 Mbps. Not a single issue during the process. Once again proving that a clean PC is almost a requirement to install MSFS without issues. Updating within the game itself is a different story, it is much slower for whatever reason.

I have no idea what your build is or the age of your PC is, but any PC with older components and loaded to the gills with a bazillion fragmented files, apps, and dozens of other games installed is a recipe for problems when it comes to MSFS. This is my second build that I have installed MSFS on (I started having some component issues in the first build) but it was still a clean build and it too installed with zero issues, So I guess you can blame some of the issue on MSFS but you can't put it all on them. I just proved it not once but twice.

[Manwith Noname]

Don't give in to experience bias.

[lawnmower501]

Microsoft (The Developer) killed all local cache by design. No warning or advice provided.

And then they limited rolling cache to what...32gb...or less....?
I have 4 TB allocated ready for rolling cache to my hard drive.
I seek a perfect flight experience next time around. Without a single problem.

But I do have poor internet connection: DSL at~5.mb/s.


And now 2024 is "online-only"?
After crowdstrike and so many past server problems?

[ZombieHunter]

Originally posted by jbonesmd:

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

I just did a complete install of core and packages along with 3rd party aircraft and it took over 15 hours. 8 hours for the initial packages and around 7 for the updates and 3rd party stuff.

Extremely slow download from 75 to 150 but never over 150 on a near 500 connection. Ridiculously slow. The official core packages failed to get past 12 / 529 for decompression. It did download everything but it failed to decompress as usual. Then the 74 extra downloads in content manager got stuck 2 or 3 times. Absolutely terrible experience and awful coding that cannot seem to figure out how to share file access or resources across threads without a deadlock (my guess anyways).

The entire process is horrific and should have never been released in such a state.

As for the next version being different, I don't buy it. This one did not have to be as bad as it is. The original FSX did not have this abomination of an installation process nor content update system. We did not force this on them, they invented it, developed it and it all rests at their feet. It is the worst installation experience out of all of my 950+ games on Steam.

There is no excuse for 134 Gb to take 8 hours and another 85 Gb to take 7 hours. None at all. My largest Steam game besides FS 2020 sits around 100 Gb and it takes around 15 to 20 minutes total to download and install.

In my earlier post I stated that with a 500 Mbps connection on a new virgin PC build it took an hour to install the standard edition at a average of 350-400 Mbps. Not a single issue during the process. Once again proving that a clean PC is almost a requirement to install MSFS without issues. Updating within the game itself is a different story, it is much slower for whatever reason.

I have no idea what your build is or the age of your PC is, but any PC with older components and loaded to the gills with a bazillion fragmented files, apps, and dozens of other games installed is a recipe for problems when it comes to MSFS. This is my second build that I have installed MSFS on (I started having some component issues in the first build) but it was still a clean build and it too installed with zero issues, So I guess you can blame some of the issue on MSFS but you can't put it all on them. I just proved it not once but twice.

I was able to get non content manager downloads to 350 or 400. But content manager downloads were still super slow. So what that means is the non content manager stuff only took about 1.5 hours but content manager took forever.

There is nothing wrong with my PC or my build. I'm using SSD and not NVME but beyond that there isn't much more I can do to improve content manager speeds within FS 2020. It is obviously a load balanced regional issue. 134 Gb in a normal Steam download would take around 15 to 30 minutes.

This is a well known and well documented issue. Don't act like it does not exist. It does.

[Vlad Tepes]

Back in 2020 I think it took me an entire day and a half (16 some hours or so) to get the game downloaded after I started it up. Steam allowed me to refund it when I explained. I subsequently bought it again lol and am now playing it :)
Steam has always been gracious about refunds at least in my experience. I even had one game where I downloaded it, tried it, refunded it, bought it later, refunded again lol... My reasons were that I thought they had updated something to improve performance but it just never worked on my machine.
So I would say that they've always been fair about this.
Maybe things have changed?