Downloading/Preloading Games packages to NAS

[Darkstar_IE]

Something occurred to me, when I was buying games. I can order & buy on my smartphone, or on a remote browser using the steam app , or web client, but I still need to physically switch on my computer, and let it stay on for a number of hours, with a relatively slow broadband connection (even if I am not using it) to let a game download, before it is ready to play.

Many gamers, now use a NAS for storage, and redundancy. I for one backup my complete steam live directory, onto my NAS, and then install, or delete games from my system, while syncing installed games to my NAS. This allows me to pull them back down again over Gigabit Ethernet, rather than having to download them again over broadband. Also typically by its nature a NAS has several TB of storage, which again is ideal for a games library.

As a future feature, it would be really cool, if Valve could develop a direct to NAS download of games, using an installer package, which could then be installed to the steam client very quickly over Ethernet, rather than direct installation to client over broadband.

This would mean that as well as buying games on smartphone or browser remotely, games could be downloaded, or preloaded to NAS, remotely, and when next you have time to play games, they can be installed in minutes instead of planning a few hours to download them.

A NAS is generally on 24/7 unlike a PC, so would serve as an ideal platform to manage a game library, and would automatically include redundancy for disaster recovery.

Just a thought !

[hklvette]

I know this topic is old, but I am bumping it since I would like this feature as well. With nearly 200GB of downloads queued up, downloading and/or caching directly to a NAS would save having to run the desktop for nearly five days straight (collecting dust all the while) to pull all of the data down. As pointed out above, NAS is designed for this type of use-case.

[Washell]

Two interested people in 18 months rather puts the lie to:

Originally posted by Darkstar_IE:

Many gamers, now use a NAS for storage

I'm not in any way opposed to this, but I can't see Valve implementing such a feature when NAS is already on the way out due to cloud storage solutions and broadband improvements. In other words, don't get your hopes up.

[Madgui]

Best idea I have :
- run steam client in your nas, login with your steam account etc.
- use the remote download feature : https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5085-SCBN-1521

I'm not sure if it will works with windows games.
Perhaps if your nas is powerfull enough, it can run a virtual machine (docker space ?) compatible with steam client (steam os perhaps).

[TokraZeno]

Originally posted by Madgui:

Best idea I have :
- run steam client in your nas, login with your steam account etc.
- use the remote download feature : https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=5085-SCBN-1521

I'm not sure if it will works with windows games.
Perhaps if your nas is powerfull enough, it can run a virtual machine (docker space ?) compatible with steam client (steam os perhaps).

Technically possible, but I think what the OP is hoping for is a way of routing the packages to the NAS so that you don't need a machine running while it downloads and only need to have a PC on for the time it takes to transfer the files over LAN. Also, a lot of NAS's use their own OS so the steam client probably configured to work for it.

I'd be keen to see this kind of feature. The NAS in my router would be perfect for this task and lead to a massive saving on energy consumption when downloading large packages.

[Darkstar_IE]

Thanks Guys. Im still using my NAS and now have several Terabytes of Games stored on there - basically my whole steam live directory. I generally leave my PC on overnight once a week to download all updates etc. - Still would love an install to NAS feature, but I think with Gigabit Fibre link at least somewhere on the Horizon, it might solve the problems. Things are moving slowly but surely . When I posted the above I had a 3Mb DSL connection, just one step up from Lowly ISDN. Now I have a 50Mb LTE connection, and I am due to get Gigabit Fibre next year. So once the cloud solutions reach the same speed of a Lan, it will be a moot point I guess. - Still would have been nice though :)

But, probably like asking for a faster cassette tape solution, on a commodore 64, just before the CBM1540/1 floppy disk was released :) In a few years everything will be in the cloud anyway.

[TokraZeno]

I certainly hope it goes that way. Replacing gaming rigs with thin clients and virtual machines would make it so much cheaper and make system requirements for developers less strict.

[Darkstar_IE]

indeed it would. I work for a large IT multinational, and many of our customers are looking towards letting us host their SCCM Distribution points as VM's within our factory , and configure their systems themselves, with their latest images, and security pathces, and domain join delivered direclty to their own systems, while in build, - allowing zero IT deskside configuration - a few years ago that would have been unthinkable - yet the demand is growing like wildfire - its a beautiful ever changing technological world :)