Steam Pauses Downloads When I Play A Game

[Gamling]

Whenever i am downloading something on steam, and i play a game, it automatically pauses my downloads.I discovered this by Alt tabbing and saw that my download was paused. This happened a few days ago and i thought that maybe i paused it and forgot. But it has happened again.

The only solution i can find for this is to Alt tab from my game, click pause download (even though its already paused) and then hit the resume download button.

Is there a setting somewhere that i can stop the downloads from automatically pausing. Somehow i doubt there is, it seems more like a bug to me....

P.S Online or offline games, still pauses. It never used to do this, its a recent thing for me. Also it only does this when games are played through Steam. If i initiate a non steam game through my desktop its fine.

[Sir Theta]

Ping.

Basically, if you were playing a multiplayer game and had a game downloading in the background at the same time, depending on your connection, you'd more than likely get a lot of bad lag.

As far as I'm aware, there's no option to disable it. Just gonna have to keep with the old "Alt-Tab + Resume Download" strategy I'm afraid.

(Apologies, reposted to add in that last bit.)

[Gamling]

Like i said, it happens with offline games as well as online games. I doubt this has anthing to do with ping or lag.

(reposted so that it ddin't look like i posted before you)

ha ha :)

[Sir Theta]

Well, I'm not sure Steam can even tell the difference, so it just does it by default with any game.

[Gamling]

Regradless if it can tell the difference, i still dont believe its down to lag and ping. It never used to do this with me, are you having the same problem too ?

[Satoru]

The main issue is the new content sytsem. it allows for delta patches to be deployed. This means less bandwidth. The problem is this generates a LOT of I/O. I/O is a performance killer especially on junky hard drives. This is also why patches are not downloaded concurrently, they would generate so many I/O contention issues as to potentially cripple a system.

[Sir Theta]

It's been like this for me for about as long as I can remember. There may have been times where the auto-pause didn't kick in, but I rarely ever play while something else is downloading, and even when I do, it's usually because I completely forgot something was even installing.

[Gamling]

The new content system would make sense. But SIr Theta has had this problem longer than he can remember, presumably before the new content system. Me on the otherhand has only experienced this recently. It might be down to different computer soft/hardware, like you mentioned about harddrives. I dont have a low grade hard drive either though.

[potus]

umm.. i forgot how to uninstall a game. a little help?

[Gamling]

Originally posted by Marshall H.:

umm.. i forgot how to uninstall a game. a little help?

Go to control pannel - Programs - Uninstall.

Originally posted by TheBDK:

They actually patched it in so that will stop download every single time you fire up a game. Fail. They also patched in "file discovery" which increases install time of new games by a whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lot. Having all files in the appropriate folder(s) is no longer good enough for this stupid drm company. That means in you have 500 games installed on your hdd and you reinstall windows on your ssd, you'll have to wait for steam to "re-discover" every single file for all 500 games. FFFFFUUUU

Thanks, that makes sense, its only since the recent patches that i've noticed this happening.