Is there a way to speed up updates installation?

[Miro]

Currently, I have to download, then reorganise everything, then verify and finally install and this take for ages...

Does someone know if it is possible to download and install?

I mean, even for the latest patch of 55.9Mo, it reorganized the whole 50.1Go ...
And look how fast that is: https://imgur.com/a/GpCEcRY

[Deathwhisper]

Hello :),

These times occur mainly when using the HDD hard disks. These are often no longer powerful enough for more modern applications and only offer a very poor data processing rate.

You can improve it mainly by using an SSD hard drive or better (for example an NVME SSD). These have significantly higher data processing rates than an HDD hard drive and are correspondingly faster when packing/unpacking, patching and moving data.

An example would be my 980 PRO from Samsung, which took about 12 seconds for the entire patch. My older HDD Sata-6 hard drive took significantly longer, although this one had the same result as you.

You can also improve HDD performance with regular maintenance. HDD hard drives fragment and should be cleaned regularly by defragmentations. This significantly improves the performance and durability of the HDD. Removing junk and giving the drive more space is also a helpful option for these drives, otherwise they have to work very hard to read the various data.

[WarpSpider]

becuase the files that are being replaced are huge? it really doesn't make any sense.
Other games don't do that.
I don't have to do anything special to update...normal update works fine, it just takes way longer than it seemingly should

[Urbanmojo]

No

[Red River]

it's not related to HDD
something else is going on

[WarpSpider]

Originally posted by Red River:

it's not related to HDD
something else is going on

i'm pretty sure it's because of the way the files are packed into .pak files
so obviously it's reinstalling a ton of stuff that really hasn't changed

[Urbanmojo]

Just let them update naturally, sometimes it's quick (I use NVME and SSD) often it's slow, go make a cup of tea or have a shower.
I'm sure scum will still be there afterwards.

[ENOWONMAI]

Same issue here, I have a Western Digital SSD and it downloads the update in seconds then it all crawls to a halt for "patching".

[xKiCkx]

Hey there OP, unfortunately, this is how steam applies patches, files are downloaded, changes are made to corresponding patches and then steam verifies the integrity of the game, unfortunately, that takes some time and the only way to make it faster is to have a faster drive than will manage to apply patch faster.

[Arc]

There are few things going on at once.

One thing is how devs structure their PAK chunks and how many of these are being flagged for update, I've seen a lot of UE4 devs touching Everything Everywhere All at Once (pun intended) every patch.
Another thing is that Steam simply has to move the entire PAK chunk, unpakc it, patch the delta, re-pack it and move it back.
Also encrypted&compressed PAKs tend to take longer to patch still.

Yet another thing is that this process takes longer the slower your PC is, if you have a decade old 5400RPM HDD it will be faster to download the game entirelly from scratch.
If you have a moderately fast SSD but slow CPU it gets bottlenecked yet again.

Additionally, cacheless (or rather DRAM-less) SSDs tend to take a hit making them slower than modern HDDs in this situation.

And lastly, there might be other things in play, corrupted files, antimalware or other app blocking files here and there, Steam bugs, and so on.


On a personal note:
One of my PCs have this problem on main SSD (hint: Do not buy trash OEM Asus ROG devices), and as far as I'm aware it's a cache-less drive. Sadly i do not have a spare SSD to test this on (yet).

[oynlengeymer]

i have found its actually faster and more reliable to uninstall reinstall full game as it does not do the long patching part if its a full reinstall, also may times you will need to validate files after the update but generally if I do a full install and validate, no files are missing. I began doing this when my updates were giving error of being corrupted even after verifying integrity. Which is apparently due to my hDD slowly dying or having at least a segment of it that is corrupt.

Since its on its way out I don't care too much but I guess on a new drive it might not be advisable to fully remove and install full game each time. For me a full install takes about 15 mins where as a 50mb updade will take close to an hour while it does that file checking part

[Miro]

Hey,

It is a bit disappointing to learn that there are no other ways to speed up this process than to change my hardware.

Nevertheless, I thank you all for your answers :)

[Pohanto]

i have the same issue everytime a patch drops. It take 2h or more to finish a less than 100mb update.
In the last 3 or 4 patches i have choosen to just unninstall the game and download it again. It takes less than 20 min

Note: i'm using SSD

[jasonHighVoltage70]

Scum has always had this stultifying method of updating. I did the tiny 50someodd update yesterday and it took 10 to 15 minutes. I updated Icarus which was 1.7gb and it was done in less than a minute. I'm using a gaming laptop with nvme, my tower has nvme. I don't know why anyone would use a normal hd anymore.

It's just Scum. You have to set aside 10 to 20 minutes to update. I like Pohanto's method of just uninstalling and reinstalling. I haven't had any other game take the insane amount of time that Scum does so no idea what xKiCkx is trying to say. Next time, I think I'll uninstall and reinstall.

[xKiCkx]

Originally posted by jasonHighVoltage70:

Scum has always had this stultifying method of updating. I did the tiny 50someodd update yesterday and it took 10 to 15 minutes. I updated Icarus which was 1.7gb and it was done in less than a minute. I'm using a gaming laptop with nvme, my tower has nvme. I don't know why anyone would use a normal hd anymore.

It's just Scum. You have to set aside 10 to 20 minutes to update. I like Pohanto's method of just uninstalling and reinstalling. I haven't had any other game take the insane amount of time that Scum does so no idea what xKiCkx is trying to say. Next time, I think I'll uninstall and reinstall.

If you take a look in other forums you will be able to find it's not the issue only for SCUM. Different games have the same problem.

[marktkm]

Originally posted by jasonHighVoltage70:

Scum has always had this stultifying method of updating. I did the tiny 50someodd update yesterday and it took 10 to 15 minutes. I updated Icarus which was 1.7gb and it was done in less than a minute. I'm using a gaming laptop with nvme, my tower has nvme. I don't know why anyone would use a normal hd anymore.

It's just Scum. You have to set aside 10 to 20 minutes to update. I like Pohanto's method of just uninstalling and reinstalling. I haven't had any other game take the insane amount of time that Scum does so no idea what xKiCkx is trying to say. Next time, I think I'll uninstall and reinstall.

There's a lot of games on Steam that have the issue, including Icarus. Here's just a few.

Icarus :
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1149460/discussions/0/3195864877891526816/

Tower Unite:
https://forums.pixeltailgames.com/t/steam-downloads-take-forever-even-after-finishing-despite-the-very-small-download-size/41623

World of Warships:
https://forum.worldofwarships.com/topic/247018-why-does-it-take-so-long-for-downloading-updates/

Dead by Daylight:
https://forum.deadbydaylight.com/en/discussion/203231/the-game-update-problem-on-steam

It's even a general discussion issue on the Steam forum:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/490121928359666277/

Some people have the issue and some people don't (I'm in the don't column and I'm running on old hardware with a SATA connected SSD).

A lot of the games that have the issue when obtained through steam don't seem to have it when purchased elsewhere. It's annoying, I'm sure, but there's nothing the devs can do about it at this point.