why do some games auto update even tho auto update is disabled?

[ZDuB]

they are disabled until i launch them. On the downloads page it says clearly "auto updates disabled" even tho its updating itself without me launching it

[Cathulhu]

You can not disable auto-updates, only delay them.

[ZDuB]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

You can not disable auto-updates, only delay them.

they are disabled until i launch them. On the downloads page it says clearly "auto updates disabled" even tho its updating itself without me launching it

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by ZDuB:

they are disabled until i launch them. On the downloads page it says clearly "auto updates disabled" even tho its updating itself without me launching it

Were those updates scheduled for a later time earlier ? Because since COVID 19 and Valve announced to expect some issues with downloads, some are scheduled for later.

[ZDuB]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Originally posted by ZDuB:

they are disabled until i launch them. On the downloads page it says clearly "auto updates disabled" even tho its updating itself without me launching it

Were those updates scheduled for a later time earlier ? Because since COVID 19 and Valve announced to expect some issues with downloads, some are scheduled for later.

no. one game was 7 days to die, and the other was ghost recon wildlands, both games have been set to only update when i launch them, and its been many many months since i launched them.

no scheduled updates no queue's, these games have needed updates for a long time, but steam just decides to start updating them even tho it clearly says on the download page "auto updates disabled"

[The Giving One]

Only other thing I can think of is, that Steam is seeing some of your game files as missing, when you log on and run Steam.

Those would not be considered "updates", as far as I know. So something might be negatively affecting your game files, such as antivirus for example, and Steam is seeing this and fixing the issue by re-downloading those files.

[ZDuB]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Only other thing I can think of is, that Steam is seeing some of your game files as missing, when you log on and run Steam.

Those would not be considered "updates", as far as I know. So something might be negatively affecting your game files, such as antivirus for example, and Steam is seeing this and fixing the issue by re-downloading those files.

i dont think so. it downloaded 5GB worth of game updates for GR Wildlands, now the game is fully updated after close to a year of not being updated.

a couple days ago 7 days to die started updating around 3GB if i remember, but for that game i stopped it and uninstalled.

For years ive had hundreds of games set to only update when i launch them, ive never had this problem.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by ZDuB:

For years ive had hundreds of games set to only update when i launch them, ive never had this problem.

That is not necessarily relevant. Just because you never had an issue before, that does not mean it is safe to assume that you don't have something new going on to cause this.

That is not proper troubleshooting to assume so.

Look at the main forum here. Your thread is the only one I see with this issue, and there are millions of Steam users with accounts. If everyone had this issue, the servers would probably not be able to handle all the load.

[ZDuB]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Originally posted by ZDuB:

For years ive had hundreds of games set to only update when i launch them, ive never had this problem.

That is not necessarily relevant. Just because you never had an issue before, that does not mean it is safe to assume that you don't have something new going on to cause this.

its not necessarily relevant to what?
i'm not assuming that i dont have something new going on to cause this. i definitely have something new going on, hence why im here looking for help

stating ive never had this problem before but now im having this problem is saying i have something new going on to cause this

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by ZDuB:

its not necessarily relevant to what?
i'm not assuming that i dont have something new going on to cause this. i definitely have something new going on, hence why im here looking for help

stating ive never had this problem before but now im having this problem is saying i have something new going on to cause this

Ok...ok...sorry. It just seemed like you were saying you never had this before and that you did not think what I exampled could be related to what is going on.

What I posted is the only other thing I can think of.

I will give an example, but this is ONLY an example :

An overprotective or misconfigured antivirus quarantines the .exe files for Steam games. When you log on and run Steam, Steam sees this and redownloads those files, because Steam sees they are missing.

That would not be an "update" to the game. It would be Steam reaquiring the files to fix the problem, similar to what happens when you verify the game files for a Steam game :

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2037-QEUH-3335

If files are missing, Steam redownloads them. They would not be "updates" to the game, and not fall under automatic updates, as far as I know.

[ZDuB]

your example makes sense, but i dont have any antivirus other than the windows security that never finds threats or quarantines anything. but thanks for the help

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by ZDuB:

your example makes sense, but i dont have any antivirus other than the windows security that never finds threats or quarantines anything. but thanks for the help

You are welcome, but antivirus is just one possibility out of several.

Are any of the games installed to an external hard drive, by chance ?

[ZDuB]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Originally posted by ZDuB:

your example makes sense, but i dont have any antivirus other than the windows security that never finds threats or quarantines anything. but thanks for the help

You are welcome, but antivirus is just one possibility out of several.

Are any of the games installed to an external hard drive, by chance ?

no

[The Giving One]

Just one more thought for now, and sorry if this does not apply or help :

How much free space do you have on the hard drive where the games are installed ?

You said before that you had "hundreds of games set to not update until launch" so assuming you have lots of them installed, the hard drive might be too full.

A hard drive that is full or nearly full can cause strange issues sometimes.

[ZDuB]

over the years ive had hundreds of games set to update when i launch them.
currently i have 140 games installed and about 50 that say "update required"

i constantly keep about 200GB free on the hard drive.

my bandwidth is not unlimited so i dont like the fact steam is downloading many GB worth of files without my authorization.

[The Giving One]

If you have the auto updates disabled, and those games are the ones that have "update required" next to them, that should be normal.

But it seems you are saying some of them are updating anyway.

And it is even more interesting that it is about 50 out of 140 games, that apparently have 'update required'.

Unless it is just that you have not used Steam in that long of a period of time, it seems rather odd that 50 games would have updates all at about the same time.

This is another reason why I suspect it is as I said before, and the issue is with the files going missing for some reason.

If bandwidth is a concern, you can try running Steam in off line mode and I 'think' that will prevent any games from updating.