Steam updates make me redownload a game

[KFCZINGERBOX]

so for the past few weeks every time a steam game has an update i have to download the whole game again.

It says the game is at 100% but when i go to my downloads in the bottom and check it, it has say 8.3gb/8.3gb but then on the right it has the entire game which its like 15gb/70gb which i am downloading Apex and with such a big game it is very annoying. I might mention on the right side it has a sort of hardrive symbol but someone help this is a stupid bug

[Nx Machina]

It is not re-downloading the entire game.

8.3gb/8.3gb is the download complete - 15gb/70gb is the download been integrated into the game. Files are been replaced, moved etc. It is not simply a case of putting the patch at the beginning, the middle or the end.

[KFCZINGERBOX]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

It is not re-downloading the entire game.

8.3gb/8.3gb is the download complete - 15gb/70gb is the download been integrated into the game. Files are been replaced, moved etc. It is not simply a case of putting the patch at the beginning, the middle or the end.

So i have to go through that every time i update a game with its exact download amount

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by chodin0:

So i have to go through that every time i update a game with its exact download amount

It depends on how the developer structured the game. Steam is just the tool.

Previously before the download ui was updated the process was the same but you did not have a visual representation of what was happening. All you saw was a green horizontal line for updating.

[Zude]

lol

[KFCZINGERBOX]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Originally posted by chodin0:

So i have to go through that every time i update a game with its exact download amount

It depends on how the developer structured the game. Steam is just the tool.

Previously before the download ui was updated the process was the same but you did not have a visual representation of what was happening. All you saw was a green horizontal line for updating.

Yea but this has been happening for every game for the past month so i think its kinda dumb

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by chodin0:

Yea but this has been happening for every game for the past month so i think its kinda dumb

It's called patching. It's a way of updating files by issuing a patch file that goes through the files you have installed and make necessary changes. The alternative is that instead of a small patch file to download, you will be forced to download large amounts of data, possibly the entire game, every time the developer updates the game. Patching has been around for years and is not unique to Steam.

The only difference now is that Steam's download page is actually telling you what's happening where it didn't before. Too many people would see the download "complete" but the update not ending, wondering why their updates weren't completing. Now the client tells you why. It's patching.

[Tharon]

the download system is indeed changed in the last updates. Now steam use a lottery system, and on 1 of 10 it verify the whole content after patching. This can explain why it seems to redownload the whole game.

[Icky Thump]

This has been insanely annoying for me. I swear game updates never used to function like this. 24mb update? Seconds after the download was finished, the patching process was over. Now, 3/4 of the whole game content needs rewritten, which gets VERY taxing when you have a massive library on an 8TB hard drive....

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Icky Thump:

This has been insanely annoying for me. I swear game updates never used to function like this. 24mb update? Seconds after the download was finished, the patching process was over. Now, 3/4 of the whole game content needs rewritten, which gets VERY taxing when you have a massive library on an 8TB hard drive....

If you're getting small updates like that it's just the shader pre caching or whatever it's called.

It always used to do this, but it did it in the background. You can turn off the option so you can't see it under settings.

[zoblin]

Eh, personally, I do too notice a enormous difference in update time, I've got the same issue, I'd love the explanation to be as you mentioned "The patching files are typically background caches, but they show them now" that's a good point and my first time hearing of it, but you can't play until the patches are finished, so if they were backgrounds, the update would still be tremendously long and you would have no idea why, the game I just updated was Deadside, 25gb's of space, yet during the update, it was updating off of the base of the far right storage icon and wasn't equivalent to the updating bar that said it would be done in minutes via the update for 250mb's, so I had to wait until 25gb's of the entire game was "patched" I decided to comment on one of these post late because this one effects me too given that I've never had updates take this long, it could just be that like you said "Developers typically have a choice on how they update/patch" Which could mean the games I own have a patching process or all games are switching to this longer process.

Originally posted by chodin0:

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

It depends on how the developer structured the game. Steam is just the tool.

Previously before the download ui was updated the process was the same but you did not have a visual representation of what was happening. All you saw was a green horizontal line for updating.

Yea but this has been happening for every game for the past month so i think its kinda dumb

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by goblin:

Eh, personally, I do too notice a enormous difference in update time, I've got the same issue, I'd love the explanation to be as you mentioned "The patching files are typically background caches, but they show them now" that's a good point and my first time hearing of it, but you can't play until the patches are finished, so if they were backgrounds, the update would still be tremendously long and you would have no idea why, the game I just updated was Deadside, 25gb's of space, yet during the update, it was updating off of the base of the far right storage icon and wasn't equivalent to the updating bar that said it would be done in minutes via the update for 250mb's, so I had to wait until 25gb's of the entire game was "patched" I decided to comment on one of these post late because this one effects me too given that I've never had updates take this long, it could just be that like you said "Developers typically have a choice on how they update/patch" Which could mean the games I own have a patching process or all games are switching to this longer process.

Originally posted by chodin0:

Yea but this has been happening for every game for the past month so i think its kinda dumb

Ah no. THat's not how it works.

The shader cahce stuff which is now shown under downloads is REALLY short - seconds in fact. If it's taking longer for you then that indicates a problem your end.

I think you're a little confused about how patching works too by the sound of what you said - it's not too clear so forgive me if I haven't quite got what you mean.

When you get a large patch like say, 25GB you mentioned, it's absolutely necessary. The reason is if a game updates something and makes the smallest change likea change to a variable that handles how anything works like health, for example, it must patch EVERY part of the game that variable is mentioned. That variable is likely mentioned thousands of times, so every line of code mentioning it must be patch.

That's why you get such sizeable patches for a start.

This is completeyl spearate from the shader cache stuff mind. As I said those are tiny and take seconds.

Now if you're having issues where patching is taking longer, then it's because of how Steam works most likely and many people don't understand it works differently.

Steam downloads games both encrypted AND compressed. What this means is that when you download a game you have to allow up to three times the total file size so it has adequate space to both swap data and sort it becofre finally writing to it's destination.

Also because of this, it means that your internet speed is often NOT the limiting factor. It's your CPU, your RAM, hard drive speed, and I/O, etc. You can actually see this and monitor it by looking at the graph on your downloads page, and by looking at Task Manager under windows.

If you notice one of your system parts is running a bit high, then that's the reason it's slower.

So it MIGHT be that your system was just on the cusp where any changes to the system has just caused it to do this now, or it could be something else like your system just having issues now.

[★StarBoy★]

it's annoying, mainly I only have it with the New world..

[John]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.