Updates take forever to install and often outright fail.

[egg]

As stated in the title, updates with this game specifically take *forever* to download and install. I've been attempting to get todays update installed and its been ~4 or so hours so far, and it just gets stuck in a validating->reinstalling loop, and sometimes just restarts the download entirely.

There are no hardware issues, this is installing on a decent SSD and the issue doesn't exist with any other game in my steam library. This happens even with the small updates and has been an issue for as long as I can remember with RS2.

Is this due to how you compress the patch files or something? It's infuriating, I seldom play RS2 anymore because every time I go to there's a small update that takes multiple hours to install.

Its always installs a bit->stops for god knows how long to I assume, uncompress something and then installs a little bit more.

For the last few big updates I've had to just fully reinstall the game to get it working. Nuking the download cache, validating files etc all fail to resolve the problem. I've tried everything on the steam support page for issues like this as well to no avail.

Edit; The only possible cause I could think of is the fact that I have just over 40GB free on my SSD, but surely that should be sufficient free space to install a ~10GB update? I get that it often downloads a compressed file and uncompresses that doubling the space required, but that would indicate at most ~20-25GB of free space required..

[Hank]

Maybe a region thing? Firewall?

I downloaded the 8.8 GB file here in Georgia, first try. It took maybe 30 minutes. It installed and launched normally, on my middle-of-the-road i5/R9 PC (w/SSD).
On first launch, it took about 40 seconds to get to the splash screen and about 2:20 to get the intro video clips and in under 3 minutes I was looking at a soldier in 5 color woodland camo with an M16.

So what is different?

I am on Win10, typical US Comcast internet w/ modem and router. This machine is on WiFi.

[egg]

I doubt its a region thing, I get a consistent 10-12MB/s download speed, and I'm on a pretty decent rig.

I'm curious to know if the patches for RS2 use a different method of compression or something compared to other steam games, it is a bit odd that it's only RS2 this happens with.

Edit; Perhaps its important to note that the game loading times are generally also fine, I'm normally the first one to load into a game and I get to the menu from pressing play in ~30 seconds or less.

[Hank]

Originally posted by exezin:

I doubt its a region thing, I get a consistent 10-12MB/s download speed, and I'm on a pretty decent rig.

I'm curious to know if the patches for RS2 use a different method of compression or something compared to other steam games, it is a bit odd that it's only RS2 this happens with.

- By region thing, I mean, in a region that blocks our content. And no, RS2 packets, like KF2 packets are pretty routine Unreal data, like many games. On my end, it is just like updating Civ or Fallout.
I am sorry it is giving you trouble, but I think something is happening locally that drops the connection to Steam briefly.

[egg]

I'm unaware of any content blocking in the UK?

I've actually just noticed something. When I start the download of this ~10GB update I have just over 40GB of free space, now its down to the final part of installing the update and I'm down to 2GB (and less) of free space. That's nearly 4x the download size being used.

I suspect this could be the cause of the issue? The question is, why is a ~10GB update using ~40GB of storage space?!

Edit; Once my storage space hits under 2GB of free space, the update haults and stops doing anything for a long a$s time. After a while it starts validating, and then restarts the installation of the update. In the time between it stopping installation and starting the validation (A really long time) I can see the free space on my SSD start to slowly grow again.

While downloading I still have all of that free space, its only once it starts installing that my free space drops down 40GB or more and things start to have issues.

[Nuca de Dolj]

had problems too....after downloading the 8 gigs it froze and then it started downloading them 8 gigs again......still....im pretty sure this is a problem on steams end....

[Hank]

You should see the install process pre-allocate space, even before the download begins, to confirm there is enough space and prevent this kind of porblem. Are you using any kind of RAID or striping that might cause the controller chip to count the space differently?
Can you change virtual memory or Recycle Bin settings to free another GB temporarily?

[egg]

I'm not using a RAID setup or anything, just a single SSD. The pre-allocation step obviously doesn't pre-allocate enough space, and this has been a wide-spread issue on steam with games.

I recall the dark souls 3 install having a similar issue, it would pre-allocate ~40GB or so space and require double to uncompress and install the files (about 80GB in total) and effected thousand of users.

I've free'd up some space and I'm doing a full re-install of the game now because this is often the only fix that works for me.

Why this game specifically uses ~40GB of space when installing a ~10GB update is beyond me though.

Edit; I just noticed that when doing a new install of the game it requires ~50GB of space when the download for the game is actually only 15GB in size, once its installed it also appears to use less than 50GB of space.

Certainly something weird going on with how this game is compressed or something, no other steam games I've played use 3-4x space when installing.

[headhunter]

Easiest way around this is delete game from your hard drive then reinstall the updated version

[egg]

Yep, that's what I'm doing from here on out because its significantly faster than installing the updates alone :/

[Virgil van Dijk]

Originally posted by headhunter:

Easiest way around this is delete game from your hard drive then reinstall the updated version

I did that and it gives me the same error