Comcast's 1 TB cap has caused me to stop buying games on steam

[mephisto925]

As the title states. Comcast's bandwidth caps have directly affected my purchases on steam. Because of the 1 terabyte cap now being enforced and the fact that when they started implimenting this cap suspiciously we went from an average of 600 to 700 GB's a month to 900 to 1000 GB's a month. We have gotten our 2 courtesy warnings about going over the limit. So this month my bill will be higher because we have gone over the limit and we still have a week left before the end of the month. So for every additional 50 GB we go over they will charge us an extra $10 up to $200. I would have bought a few games with the winter sale. Atleast $100 worth but instead I bought none because I can't see buying a game that I can't play unless I want to pay extra to download it. I know I can buy it and then wait until next month, but then next month there will be new games I want to buy so I have to be careful about what I get because I can only download so much before hitting my cap. Comcast has totally affected how I buy games now. I would love to find physical copies of games on Blue-ray. then atleast I would only have to download the patches. I may have to start buying physical copies on Amazon. It would be cheaper for me. Im looking for options here and thanks to Comcast and they're bandwidth cap steam and all the other online gaming stores may become obsolete.

[Zefar]

There are not a lot of games that takes up to like 50 GB and you'd need to buy 20 of those games to get up to 1000 GB limit. It's like 20 triple A games.

Are you sure you're downloading THAT much? Surely this limit isn't something you'll hit every month too right?

Also buying retail won't solve the problem as Steam will still download the latest version of the game because the files on the disk are outdated.

[AbedsBrother]

It sucks to hit the data cap, but why is this a problem for you now? Comcast has had a 1TB data cap for home internet for over a year.
https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11521566/comcast-data-cap-raised-1-tb-limit

https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/06/comcasts-1tb-data-caps-start-to-roll-out-nationwide/

[WolfEisberg]

I have comcast and we are cord cutters for my home, so the internet is used for watching TV as well. We average just below 500GB per month.

What the heck are you doing that you need to download more than 1TB per month?

[Satoru]

1 TB a month? I can barely scratch 500GB downloading tons of games and scraping jpegs and movies of usenet

You should probably invest in some kind of bandwidth monitoring tool and see what is sucking up 1TB a month.

[Warsmith Honsou]

You should honestly have a look at your lifestyle if you are using that much data a month on downloading games, having a job or another hobby alongside gaming will go a long way to reducing how many hours and different games you need to keep yourself occupied.

[J4MESOX4D]

A 1TB cap is a huge amount of data for one person or a single household. A lot of providers around the globe have fair use caps of a lot less and that's still too much in most cases.

[Washell]

Originally posted by Satoru:

You should probably invest in some kind of bandwidth monitoring tool and see what is sucking up 1TB a month.

This.

General tips:

• Don't leave netflix running when you get to the chill part
  
• Only download the games you're actually going to play
  
• Don't put a streaming service in 4k when you're watching it on a 1080p or lower screen
  
• ...already out of ideas, more people wanna fill in?

[WolfEisberg]

Originally posted by Washell:

Originally posted by Satoru:

You should probably invest in some kind of bandwidth monitoring tool and see what is sucking up 1TB a month.

This.

General tips:

• Don't leave netflix running when you get to the chill part
  
• Only download the games you're actually going to play
  
• Don't put a streaming service in 4k when you're watching it on a 1080p or lower screen
  
• ...already out of ideas, more people wanna fill in?

With many of the streaming services there is an option to turn off autoplay. That way if you end up falling asleep while watching something, it won't continue to play 1 show after another the whole night.

If you have kids, they really do not care if a show is in HD or not. Many services allow you to limit bandwidth so your kids only see stuff in SD instead of HD.

[Spawn of Totoro]

OP, what Comcast has told me, they won't charge for the extra GB, but will instead roll you over into the Unlimited plan if it happens often.

We had trouble staying under 1TB as well since we have 3 gamers in the house and 4 people who watch netflix/streaming regularly, so the unlimited was worth it.

As for Steam Sales, you can still make the purchase and not download it until latter on if you want. When a game is tied to your account, there is no expiration date on it, so you can start the download at any time. I have done it many times before getting unlimited. It sucks to wait, but you just have to choose what is best for you.

[Washell]

Originally posted by mephisto925:

I would love to find physical copies of games on Blue-ray.

Forgot to address this: PC games aren't (reliably) released on Blu-ray, and the DVD versions tend to only include installers that download the entire game. The only reliable way to obtain physical copies is to switch to consoles, and you'd still get hefty patches there.

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

OP, what Comcast has told me, they won't charge for the extra GB, but will instead roll you over into the Unlimited plan if it happens often.

Are you in an area where Comcast has competition?

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Washell:

Are you in an area where Comcast has competition?

Very few and they only have a max speed of 25 Mbps.

[WolfEisberg]

Originally posted by Spawn of Totoro:

Originally posted by Washell:

Are you in an area where Comcast has competition?

Very few and they only have a max speed of 25 Mbps.

Better then what I have for competition against Comcast, which is satellite at 10 mbits/sec and 10 GB data cap per month.

[RRW359]

Unfortunately, Comcast may be your only option. I recently moved out of my familys house and my only two options are Comcast and Centurylink. I chose the latter for several reasons, one being that they treat their cap differently (I rarely use more than 100-200gb anyways, but I still don't like the idea that Comcast may charge me more if I use enough data), whereas Centurylink will throttle you. However, I have not had a good experiance getting internet from them (ordered it on the 20'th, was supposed to activate yesterday, and now a tech is coming tomorrow) and can't recommend them over Comcast. You may want to go to https://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/, but be warned that some ISP's just use other's lines (Ex: Earthlink is listed in my area, but they just use Comcast's lines and have the same speed/prices).

[secuda]

Op has better chanse in changing isp then blu-ray pc games.

[Abisha]

it go's quick i use VPN with opera and it shows how much data i have been used by juist browsing and it's a lot in a week time. if you buy digital videogames 1TB a month ain't so much