Why is every small patch 20+GB in size?

[Killjoy]

Is everyone else seeing this as well? The description says this latest patch is 'a small patch to prevent crashes' but it's 22GB and takes a half hour to deploy. this is the only game where I see these types of issues on steam

[Northstrider]

That's not a download, it's the patch itself. Steam creates copies of the affected game files before applying the patch which is why it takes that long. So you can technically download 1mb and still have to wait for 100gb to finish copying.

[Kuro]

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

[belfagor]

756mb only to be downloaded, it went really fast... the problem is the patching the whole 72gb the game takes on the HDD. this is taking forever (like 25minutes) and then the "verify" phase. another 15m or so. I have the game installed on a Hybrid 2TB HDD/SSD so I assume it's not cached on the SSD but still I can't understand this. The other game with similar issue is Icarus. Rocketwerks releases weekly patches for that game and it's another 30 minutes wasted.

[onasha]

Originally posted by Kuro:

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

Yeah the Space issue is because the GF devs use the patching system that's built into UE5 and usually used during main dev cycles (they have posts in their software forums urging devs to build out a different framework before shipping) it requires free space roughly the size of the installed game (or in this case the files being rewritten in the .pak) so that it can make a "sidecar" file unpack all of the game files from the .pak rewrite them and repack them. It's really bad on consumer hardware like SSDs and super lazy to ship a game still using it.

[Vin]

Originally posted by Kuro:

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

another example of bad end user knowledge. you should stop gaming if you dont know how much free space is required for large games to update.

[Vin]

Originally posted by onasha:

Originally posted by Kuro:

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

the GF devs use the patching system that's built into UE5 and usually used during main dev cycles (they have posts in their software forums urging devs to build out a different framework before shipping)

^this is the problem they should address.

[Handbanana]

Originally posted by Kuro:

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

That will happen with every game you play so you might want to figure it out.

First you download the patch file. This isn't the actual size of the file fyi because it is compressed. It will then unpack that file which can be 2-3x larger than the downloaded size. Now you have both the compressed and uncompressed files at the same time.

Then it will apply the patch which will make copies and overwrite existing files depending the files being overwritten. Depending on the extent of of the patch it will allocate space up to 50% of the games actual install size.

After the patch is fully applied it will then delete old files and clean up.

Generally you should have at least 50gb free at all times on your drive. You are better if its closer to 100gb. If its also your OS drive it should be around 150gb because your OS WILL allocate dedicated space for updates and not tell you so the available space you see is often not actually accurate. Specially if you have pending windows updates.

[Killjoy]

Originally posted by Handbanana:

Originally posted by Kuro:

this is complete BS. 780mb update, 25gb free on my drive and steam says not enough space. yeah right i'm gonna get right on clearing more space for this, I think i'm fine without the update. (edit, 38 gb free now still not enough free space, I'm done with trying to install this update)

That will happen with every game you play so you might want to figure it out.

First you download the patch file. This isn't the actual size of the file fyi because it is compressed. It will then unpack that file which can be 2-3x larger than the downloaded size. Now you have both the compressed and uncompressed files at the same time.

Then it will apply the patch which will make copies and overwrite existing files depending the files being overwritten. Depending on the extent of of the patch it will allocate space up to 50% of the games actual install size.

After the patch is fully applied it will then delete old files and clean up.

Generally you should have at least 50gb free at all times on your drive. You are better if its closer to 100gb. If its also your OS drive it should be around 150gb because your OS WILL allocate dedicated space for updates and not tell you so the available space you see is often not actually accurate. Specially if you have pending windows updates.

I've got plenty of space. This game is on a separate SSD with over 1TB of free space. it's also the only game where this happens (that I notice)

[0menX]

It is not the only game where applying patches (not downloading) on the files takes a longer time. Phasmophobia and Mortal Kombat 11 did it sometimes as well. It is not that unusual.

[Naamtar]

Size of the patch, that is - the download - is what it states.

Depending on how the file needs to be written it can mean Steam needs to re-compile large amounts of information/inject the file into an already compressed file then re-compress that file, hence your disk is writing 20 GB of data.

As far as I know this is an engine limitation and not something the developers have control over.

You should always try and have at least double what the game's total size is free on the disk it's installed to, btw. I.e. 80gb game = 160 gb on the drive it's installed to.

[Migz - DH]

I haven't built anything using UE5 myself, so I only know what the UE docs tell me.
In the editor's Advanced Settings (File>Package Project>Packaging Settings), there are these two options related to what we experience with patching this game:

Use Pak File
Whether to package your project's assets as individual files or a single package. If enabled, all assets will be put into a single .pak file instead of copying out all the individual files. If your project uses a lot of asset files, then using a Pak file may make it easier to distribute as it reduces the amount of files you need to transfer. This option is disabled by default.

Generate Chunks
Whether to generate .pak file chunks that can be used for streaming installs.

UE docs[docs.unrealengine.com]

In Remnant II, there are two large chunks located in the Paks folder: pakchunk0-Windows.pak (related file is over 31GB) and pakchunk1-Windows.pak (related file is over 43GB). I presume that each pak contains similar types of assets, but . I don't see an easy way in this menu to limit the size of chunks or to tell the editor how many chunks a developer wants to break the paks into.

[Migz - DH]

Those big files, though, are what are being patched, so ya, lots of data moving around even with tiny downloads.

[Migz - DH]

On the plus side, they could have just used one pak file instead of 2 chunks. lol