Small update, large patch - ongoing problem

[\(^-^)/]

Particularly in Rust, but I've seen it happen with other games, I have a small update, say, 200MB. I finish this download very quickly, but then I have a massive patching period where it doesn't display a size, merely a percentage that goes up slowly. This has been going on for a few months now, and it isn't problematic enough to worry about, since it does conclude and my game works, but its a considerable time waster and not particularly enjoyable.

Actually, if I pause the patching and start a different download, it does show the patch size, >80GB. I have seen it before at around 48GB, but either way its very peculiar because Rust is one of the only games that does this. Anyone happen to know any fixes or causes?

[rawWwRrr]

Patching game files is not an update process that is unique to Rust.

Depends on the game. Depends on what the devs updated. Depends on whether Steam's service can determine if a patch is sufficient or if it requires the user to re-download entire updated files.

The visibility of the sizes is a recent complaint after an update to the downloads page a short while back.

[ReBoot]

The real timewaster would be to download patched game files. 80 GB of disk I/O is nothing. Especially compared to 80 GB WAN I/O. Downloading 80 GB takes way longer than downloading 200 MB and then patching 80 GB.

[\(^-^)/]

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Patching game files is not an update process that is unique to Rust.

Depends on the game. Depends on what the devs updated. Depends on whether Steam's service can determine if a patch is sufficient or if it requires the user to re-download entire updated files.

The visibility of the sizes is a recent complaint after an update to the downloads page a short while back.

I'm aware patching game files is not unique to Rust. This is stated in the first sentence of my thread. The thing I'm concerned about is that while it is not exclusive to Rust, it happens 100% of Rust updates for a large amount of time. I understand the basic idea behind patching and why it may occur for other games and updates, but it seems much harder to understand why an individual game would need to be patched every single update regardless of size or what the devs change for months on end.

For reference, my task manager had a mildly elevated CPU% and 50% Disk%.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by \(^-^)/:

Originally posted by rawWwRrr:

Patching game files is not an update process that is unique to Rust.

Depends on the game. Depends on what the devs updated. Depends on whether Steam's service can determine if a patch is sufficient or if it requires the user to re-download entire updated files.

The visibility of the sizes is a recent complaint after an update to the downloads page a short while back.

I'm aware patching game files is not unique to Rust. This is stated in the first sentence of my thread. The thing I'm concerned about is that while it is not exclusive to Rust, it happens 100% of Rust updates. I understand the basic idea behind patching and why it may occur for other games and updates, but it seems much harder to understand why an individual game would need to be patched every single update regardless of size or what the devs change for months on end.

For reference, my task manager had a mildly elevated CPU% and 50% Disk%.

This got to do with how this game's engine's internal file keeping is structured. For some consequence of some technical decisions made during this game's development, the patching process is more pronounced with this game than it is with other games you have installed.

That's normal, that's nothing to worry about. Different games/game engines are built differently. There's no technical nor legal rule stating all games have to behave the same in thst regard (or any other regard, for that matter).