Why does it take forever to download purchased games?

[Clarity]

I have 100mb (ATT Uverse plan) all speed tests show I am pretty consistent at that speed. However I can delete my SSD, reinstall windows 10 and all my drivers and software apx 6 to 8 times before I can download COD ww2 from Steam. I've tried different areas around me and the fastest I can find is about 12.4 mbs. HOURS LATER I can finally play!

[Cathulhu]

12.4 Megabyte pretty much equal 100 MegaBit.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9498-WPDF-3220&l=

You can "fix" your issue by going into Steam --> Settings --> Downloads --> Show Bits instead of Bytes.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Clarity:

I have 100mb (ATT Uverse plan) all speed tests show I am pretty consistent at that speed. However I can delete my SSD, reinstall windows 10 and all my drivers and software apx 6 to 8 times before I can download COD ww2 from Steam. I've tried different areas around me and the fastest I can find is about 12.4 mbs. HOURS LATER I can finally play!

Steam Defaults to MB/s.

12.4 MB/s = ~99.2 mb/s

Steam > Settings > Downloads >>> Display download rates in bits per second.

[Washell]

Buy smaller games or faster internet. 100Megabit per second equals 12.5 Megabyte per second, so you're getting the speed you're paying for.

[Clarity]

errrr! I think we have taken a step backwards by downloading games, so much faster when on a CD lol. I remember downloading Windows updates, would take all night...

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Clarity:

errrr! I think we have taken a step backwards by downloading games, so much faster when on a CD lol

You aren't DL'ing games from a CD though.

[Clarity]

It use to be

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by Clarity:

errrr! I think we have taken a step backwards by downloading games, so much faster when on a CD lol

You aren't DL'ing games from a CD though.

:qr:

You're installing from a CD. I know
'

[Cathulhu]

A CD can contain 700 Megabytes at best.
Call of Duty: WW2 needs about 90 Gigabytes space on the harddrive.
You'd need about 130 CDs to install the game.
With your 100MBit connection you can download the content of one CD in 56 seconds. No way do you have a drive fast enough to read the 700MB from just one CD in less than a minute. The CD wouldn't be able to cope with the rotational speed required to gain such a transmission speed.

Downloading can be faster than installing from disc these days. Games just got a lot bigger.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

A CD can contain 700 Megabytes at best.

Yup!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1620992612

Still mad at Verizon though.

[Clarity]

I may show my age but there was talk of games on disks similar to blue ray that would hold more but I get the point. Been waiting on Google, Uverse , 5G or someone to bring us faster speeds

[Kargor]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Originally posted by Clarity:

errrr! I think we have taken a step backwards by downloading games, so much faster when on a CD lol

You aren't DL'ing games from a CD though.

:qr:

Actually, years ago when I did this (I don't know whether Steam still has this feature), you could run the Steam client with a command line option to make it "download" the game from CD/DVD. It even supported multiple disks.

At the time, I preferred doing this over the installer that was on the DVD, as I assumed that the Steam client itself is guaranteed to do the right things, whereas the installer on the CD may or may not do things properly with respect to Steam.

Of course, I only had 2 Steam games on disks. After installing the first one with the method described, I quickly learned that it would just download a huge update anyway -- so I didn't bother using the disk with the second game at all, and just downloaded the whole thing from the start.