Summer Sale game slowing down download speed?

[Gorilla_Scientist]

Is the game slowing down steam downloads? Because I usually get 2.3-3.0 Mbs and I'm getting small amounts of kilobytes per second instead.. It is saying it will take 12 hours just to download 2GB sheesh.

[Bench]

No because the game files are on separate servers.

If you have really slow speeds try to change the download region:

Steam/Settings/Downloads

[Gorilla_Scientist]

It's already on the closest server to me. I've been dowloading with no issues until recently.

[Bench]

It doesn't matter if it's the closest one, when the server is under heavy load you still get a slow connection.

[Gorilla_Scientist]

Fair enough

[PC PICHAU GAMER]

lol

[Bodya]

My internet is quite fast but yesterday for some reason my downloads started to pause. i don't know why. it has never done anything like this. even during the summer sales, it always went fast but now it pauses the downloads. i can't download anything since yesterday afternoon. i always install my games on my external usb hard drive. i tried to to do a test. the game i was trying to install was cs:go. i tried to install it on my usb hard drive and the download would always pause but when i would install it on my actual laptop, it would go normally. i don't know what's happening. any help is appreciated.

[Kargor]

Make sure both your boxes are set to use the same server. I've played around a bit with server settings on my last download to see if I could get closer to my theoretical max (I have no idea on the source of the limit, though); while it didn't make much of a difference, results may be noticeably different for other cases.

Also, maybe the USB disk is too full, too fragmented, or the drive is getting fixed because you unplugged it at a bad time. Things like that can cause a lot of head movement which can slow down writes to a crawl.

Just give it some time and don't panic; Steam will probably keep on going with the download.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by TTV/DK_DiRE:

It's already on the closest server to me. I've been dowloading with no issues until recently.

There's your problem, and it's a common one.

Most people (wrongly) assume that it's like game servers - you need the closest one to you. You don't because you ain't reliant on ping.

If you choose the closest to you and it has congestion issues (which it will during these sales as everybody will be buying and downloading) then changing to another one near you will likely ALSO be congested.

Here's what works - think of where in the world is currently in their night cycle. Choose that. Try to think of countries that are sparse in population or spread out too.

Bam. YOur problem should be solved. If not, then there's another issue at play.

[thunderdigger]

I am having a similar issue. I have submitted a support ticket. I have attempted several troubleshoot steps. I cleared the download cache, repaired the install folder, tried several different download regions. My internet speeds test at 500 Mb/s down. I can download games from GOG to the same HDD at 30-40 MB/s. I can install games via Steam to my SSD at good speeds. But when I attempt to install via the Steam client to the HDD, I get a short spike of 50-70 MB/s for a few seconds, followed by very slow speeds, which stutter on and off, and sometimes stop completely. I swapped out the HDD for a different one, and have the same issue. I am also running on a fresh installation of Windows and Steam, with no difference.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by thunderdigger:

I am having a similar issue. I have submitted a support ticket. I have attempted several troubleshoot steps. I cleared the download cache, repaired the install folder, tried several different download regions. My internet speeds test at 500 Mb/s down. I can download games from GOG to the same HDD at 30-40 MB/s. I can install games via Steam to my SSD at good speeds. But when I attempt to install via the Steam client to the HDD, I get a short spike of 50-70 MB/s for a few seconds, followed by very slow speeds, which stutter on and off, and sometimes stop completely. I swapped out the HDD for a different one, and have the same issue. I am also running on a fresh installation of Windows and Steam, with no difference.

There's a few things I can suggest.

For a start, if you're using Windows 10 there is a known issue within it (especially if you use latptops) that power settings can wreck your disk acitivity. Often, it means your disc activity sits permanently at 100% slowing down everything.. So you might want to check that, if it's a new install.

Next, I'd suspect a driver issue. Are you sure when you reinstalled that the drivers for the hard drive or USB or however it's connected are up to date, and haven't been corrupted? This is a bit of a long shot, but it's worth mentioning.

Lastly, it all depends on what game you're downloading. If you're saying the SAME game exactly was downloading fine on SSD, but now it doesn't on mechanical HD, then that is a problem. But if it's a different game, that could well be normal.

Many games just download in one long stream, but others (like Ark, for example) stop and start regularly and get bottlenecked by the disk operation, as it downloads a bit, then uncompresses and swaps the data to be written before resuming the next chunk to download.