Download speed bugged

[senzoux[2]]

I'm trying to download the game, but it keeps getting 'cut off', going to 0mbps, then to 500kbps, then to 0 again...

I can download other games at full speed (60mbps) without issues (just tried), but this game dl is broken.


Anyone else encountered this?

Is this related to game files, or is Steam the problem?

[StepS]

I am having the same issue. I have found several other topics about this problem here but none are helpful (and most people assume it is an issue with Steam's backend servers which is false). Long story short: it seems to be a combination of how the game files are stored, and Steam client's download behavior. Here are my observations:

I'm downloading the game on an HDD and it seems something is off with disk usage. When downloading this game, HDD stays overloaded at 100%, writing some data every 20 seconds, and then staying completely "idle" (but still at 100% usage!) with 0 bytes/s read or write speed for 15 seconds. Then I see an over 10 seconds (!) average response time. The download probably pauses because Steam is not done flushing cache to the disk, which is overloaded. This is the only Steam game with such an issue, and there are no issues with my HDD otherwise (all values reported by SMART are healthy as well). There is no interference from Windows Defender either.

I have not yet tried downloading using the SSD, but I suppose it would work fine (I don't have enough free space left there at the moment).

Steam preallocates data for all games that it downloads. I've taken a look at the contents of the "downloading" folder and it seems the game consists mostly of huge package blobs over 300-400 MB each, totalling 29 GB. Perhaps that, in conjunction with Steam's preallocation, causes the disk overload. I don't know how Steam rewrites that data during download, but something about it is definitely off, should be reported to the Steam developers.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to disable preallocation for games downloaded through the client. It is, however, possible to download game depot contents directly using the Steam console, a process which does not preallocate. I might try this later and let you know what I get.