Steam and the ESO Launcher

[GankThat]

Greetings,

I have never posted here, but I have seen this issue discussed many, many times both here and in the ESO forums where I will be posting this again. When installing the game through Steam for the first time, I have encountered a problem. After reaching out to both ESO support and Steam with no solutions from the pros, I have discovered a fix. First, some background:

I have a SSD that I use for my Windows install. For reasons that are my own, I chose to partition that drive into two parts with the OS on one, and software on the other. The capacity of the SSD is 240GB, and I allocated 115GB for software, and the rest to my OS. Because this game requires 87GB according to the launcher, I thought I was in the clear.

I was wrong. After installing the game through Steam, the game files were downloaded and I was left with approximately 30GB of space left on the install partition. I started the ESO launcher, and it prompted me to install ESO. Strange, I thought I just did. When I click through the install process, I'm told I have only about 30GB of space left, and I need to free up more disk space in order to install the game. Wait... what? I realized the launcher was not recognizing the files Steam downloaded, and was asking for essentially TWICE the required space on my partition. Since that was more than what was even available on that partition, I thought I was out of luck.

There have been many discussions about this problem and after several google searches, and searching through official forums, I have discovered the solution and I wanted to bring it to the forefront again.

Once the game is fully downloaded through Steam, you will have all the launcher files as well as all the game files (minus a few patches and whatnot). Simply deleting the "Elder Scrolls Online" directory from the Steam ESO directory (you will know it to be the correct one when you realize it's like 80GB in size), then running the launcher will allow the launcher to install the game rather than Steam, eliminating the need for double the necessary space to install the game.

I hope this solution helps some people out... I'd hate to see people being unable to play such a great game due to this issue.

P.S. If we could download the launcher from our account page after having bought the game through Steam, that would save us all quite a bit of bandwidth and time... just saying... lol

[Trigger]

I vote to PIN this thread.

[Mordrekai]

Thank you!!!

[Kyutaru]

The double download happens because the files you download through Steam are not the installation. They're merely the files FOR the installation. An archived copy of the game that hasn't been unpackaged yet. Normally such files are on a DVD for installation purposes. For the game to correctly install, you naturally need enough space to decompress the files into. This was a lazy and cheap way that Zenimax made for introducing ESO to Steam. The files compressed represent a smaller download than uncompressed and in full directories. Normally other MMOs just download the launcher and let you download the files directly but this costs Zenimax more money and runs through their servers. Offloading the majority of the downloading to Steam and their servers saves them a pretty penny, more so by being packaged into a smaller download of 60+ gb. The inconvenience to the players is not on their high priority concern list.

[GankThat]

Originally posted by Kyutaru:

The double download happens because the files you download through Steam are not the installation. They're merely the files FOR the installation. An archived copy of the game that hasn't been unpackaged yet. Normally such files are on a DVD for installation purposes. For the game to correctly install, you naturally need enough space to decompress the files into. This was a lazy and cheap way that Zenimax made for introducing ESO to Steam. The files compressed represent a smaller download than uncompressed and in full directories. Normally other MMOs just download the launcher and let you download the files directly but this costs Zenimax more money and runs through their servers. Offloading the majority of the downloading to Steam and their servers saves them a pretty penny, more so by being packaged into a smaller download of 60+ gb. The inconvenience to the players is not on their high priority concern list.

I think you're right but... I mean official tech support basically said contact Steam or just deal with it. Such a bummer...

[GankThat]

Originally posted by GankThat:

Greetings,

I have never posted here, but I have seen this issue discussed many, many times both here and in the ESO forums where I will be posting this again. When installing the game through Steam for the first time, I have encountered a problem. After reaching out to both ESO support and Steam with no solutions from the pros, I have discovered a fix. First, some background:

I have a SSD that I use for my Windows install. For reasons that are my own, I chose to partition that drive into two parts with the OS on one, and software on the other. The capacity of the SSD is 240GB, and I allocated 115GB for software, and the rest to my OS. Because this game requires 87GB according to the launcher, I thought I was in the clear.

I was wrong. After installing the game through Steam, the game files were downloaded and I was left with approximately 30GB of space left on the install partition. I started the ESO launcher, and it prompted me to install ESO. Strange, I thought I just did. When I click through the install process, I'm told I have only about 30GB of space left, and I need to free up more disk space in order to install the game. Wait... what? I realized the launcher was not recognizing the files Steam downloaded, and was asking for essentially TWICE the required space on my partition. Since that was more than what was even available on that partition, I thought I was out of luck.

There have been many solutions to this problem listed and after several google searches, and searching through official forums, I have discovered the solution and I wanted to bring it to the forefront again.

Once the game is fully downloaded through Steam, you will have all the launcher files as well as all the game files (minus a few patches and whatnot). Simply deleting the "Elder Scrolls Online" directory from the Steam ESO directory (you will know it to be the correct one when you realize it's like 80GB in size), then running the launcher will allow the launcher to install the game rather than Steam, eliminating the need for double the necessary space to install the game.

I hope this solution helps some people out... I'd hate to see people being unable to play such a great game due to this issue.

P.S. If we could download the launcher from our account page after having bought the game through Steam, that would save us all quite a bit of bandwidth and time... just saying... lol

Very soon I intend to include the file path to the folder that needs to be deleted. Thanks for the positive feedback folks!

[GankThat]

Originally posted by Mordrekai:

Thank you!!!

I just glad it helped someone!

[GankThat]

Originally posted by Fieldsman:

I had the double download problem as my ssd was not big enough for the 85 something GB extra update on top of the steam 66 Gb so I loaded windows 10 onto a disc drive then steam then the eso backup. It still wanted to update in a big way but the room was there so it did it.

It never actually downloaded another 85GB though, it was more like 4 Gb thank goodness. In 15 minuites i could then play.

Also I dont need to back this eso up when i'm fed up with it just leave this drive alone and start the ssd drive for the other games that are easy to backup and restore as and when i fancy them.

Its such a big game thats backup unfriendly so having it on a spare drive might work out good.

Right. It doesn't require the full size of the game, but the launcher isn't "smart" enough to realize that so it only checks to see if the drive has enough space to begin the installation, without realizing that nearly all the game files are already present... If the launcher would just check for a directory for eso and check for signatures of game files, perhaps all this would be avoided.

[GankThat]

Originally posted by Trigger:

I vote to PIN this thread.

If it helps people like me, then I do too 😉

[Wo1f]

lol so you either need double the required space to install the game, or you need to download 80
gigs of data only to delete it all and then download the same 80 gigs of data again this time through the launcher....so double the space vs double the download...

wow
ZOS/Steam sure are such amazing programmers/coders, a monkey with a keyboard could code better by just facerlolling on the keyboard...

[GankThat]

Originally posted by Wo1f:

lol so you either need double the required space to install the game, or you need to download 80
gigs of data only to delete it all and then download the same 80 gigs of data again this time through the launcher....so double the space vs double the download...

wow
ZOS/Steam sure are such amazing programmers/coders, a monkey with a keyboard could code better by just facerlolling on the keyboard...

While I don't subscribe to the idea that making simple fixes to functionality are simple to code, I do believe that this is a foolish redundancy that should be resolved.

[notNSANE]

for what it's worth, you don't need to have the game installed on a SSD to run well. It's fast enough on an HDD.