preloading did nothing, being forced to download it again despite having it installed

[Machawitz]

steam to me is saying it's downloading after having downloaded and preloaded the game. 10 minutes and 3% doesn't sound like unpacking or fast, if preloading did nothing, not sure why I was allowed to do it

[zero]

same

[Viper]

NO your not. It is unpacking and decrypting the preload. Preloads are encrypted packed files. You do not have a ready to play game after a preload. That takes some time from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.

[Rusty]

Those files are also sitting in your directory wasting space. Completely empty Steam/steamapps/depotcache

[Machawitz]

i can't even just restart steam or stop the download, game is just unplayable for the couple hours this will now take to download for no good reason. my normal download speeds are over 300 mbps and this took less than 30 minutes to preload... lotta good any of that did

[Just Monika]

Ya, it's quite a joke of a preload when the unpacking is taking 10x as long as the download did.

[Machawitz]

mine still actually tells me it's just downloading and considering steam's servers are starting to crash, i don't think I'm allowed to play the game i bought today

[Seppy Beppy]

the game told me it would take 1 day to unpack, so i deleted it and am just downloading it again, id rather wait an hour or two instead of a day, makes me miss Xbox where its instantly ready the moment it releases if you preloaded it

[Machawitz]

i'm at 34% but if i cancel it, i'm at 97, but trying again even after restarting steam puts me back to 34%

[Machawitz]

actually deleting it and trying to redownload did literally nothing but set me back further. steam and devs are bad. there's literally no point to preloading and download speeds are abysmal for literally no good reason

[Handbanana]

Originally posted by Machawitz:

actually deleting it and trying to redownload did literally nothing but set me back further. steam and devs are bad. there's literally no point to preloading and download speeds are abysmal for literally no good reason

You have no idea what you are talking about. The game stops at 97% because that is the process of unpacking the file. You can see in steam the progress of the install. The preload just saved you the download time.

[Grimzy]

Originally posted by Machawitz:

actually deleting it and trying to redownload did literally nothing but set me back further. steam and devs are bad. there's literally no point to preloading and download speeds are abysmal for literally no good reason

Download speed will depend on your internet.
All preloads on steam work exactly the same way. This has nothing to do with devs. Files are downloaded but are encrypted. Once launch happens they will decrypt and eventually download the remaining like 100 MB or a bit more.
Decrypt speed depends purely on your PC. For some with god-speed internet, it will be faster to download full the game rather than wait for decryption.

In this case: it might say "downloading" in steam but if you actually properly look you will see download speed as 0, so its only decrypting.
Its baffling how many people do not know how preloading on steam works.

[Cromie]

Originally posted by Machawitz:

steam to me is saying it's downloading after having downloaded and preloaded the game. 10 minutes and 3% doesn't sound like unpacking or fast, if preloading did nothing, not sure why I was allowed to do it

100% still the case with god of war. Not stated anywhere on steam how this process works and the fact it takes longer to decrypt then to just simply install it is stupid.

Literally deleting and re-installing is more efficient. No having to waste time decrypting when the title is live.