Steam downloader for low power systems

[Tasslehoff]

Digital delivery is a great thing, but to be honest the worst aspect is the download.
Many people around the world don't have a huger broadband connection, for example I have a 4Mbps xDSL connection which require many hours of download for each game on a gaming pc with great power consumption :(

It will be great if there is a simple steam downloader (for example a command line one) which runs almost everywhere (java? phython?) that give the opportunity to run these slow downloads on low power server (for example an ARM system, like Raspberry PI, Cubieboard and many others) or network media tanks or OperWrt systems.

These downloads can be started passing Steam username and password to the application, and returns an archive similar to Steam game backup that will be restored on the gaming pc offline.

[Ash258™]

And why not on Android/apple?
Lots of people have "smartphones" with at least 16Gb SD card. It's enough for lots of game :)

[Satoru]

If you have slow download speeds, a 'low power' system isn't goign to magically solve that though....

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Ash258™:

And why not on Android/apple?
Lots of people have "smartphones" with at least 16Gb SD card. It's enough for lots of game :)

??

We're solving slow download speeds with even slower speeds and obliterating people's data caps?

[Ash258™]

Phones has Wifi connection ;)

[Spencer]

Honestly the trouble isn't worth it. Electricity is relatively cheap, how many cents of electriicty to run your pc for a day downloading a huge game vs buying and setting up an additional "low power" system, the gains don't really justify it. You'd be better off upgrading to a newer system, modern systems idle at very low power consumption levels, much less than 100 watts easy for a lower mid end desktop, even a higher power desktop idles around just 100 watts as well.

If you are paranoid you can just download via a laptop, laptops idle power is not worth talking about.

[Tasslehoff]

Originally posted by Satoru:

If you have slow download speeds, a 'low power' system isn't goign to magically solve that though....

This is obvious, my xDSL does not magically improve its bandwidth only because I attached an ARM Soc to it.
The point is that the less the system absorb the less it costs, so I don't care if the download takes days, I know that someday the download will finish, the important thing (for my money and also for the environment, why not?) is that the power cost for this download is lower.

[Tasslehoff]

Originally posted by Spencer:

Honestly the trouble isn't worth it. Electricity is relatively cheap, how many cents of electriicty to run your pc for a day downloading a huge game vs buying and setting up an additional "low power" system, the gains don't really justify it.

I don't know where do you live, but in my country (Italy) electricity is relatively expensive (last month I got a 900€ bill, 1224$), the cost for a single download can reach some euros.
If I bought a game on sales for (for example) 5€ I will pay almost 50% of it only for the download, that's a huge cost considering that many stores (for example play.com and many others) will send the game for free.

You must consider that a low power system (for example a Raspberry PI, Cubieboard, Beagleboard, Arduino Yún, Olimex systems) now are available for a really low price, for 20 or 30$ you can buy a fully functional system with a linux distribution onboard.

I still think that a Steam downloader will be a great idea, not only for us but also for Valve (consider the advertising power of this "green" solution for DD).

[Charlie]

The main thing Steam need to get is more servers, that would lower the time it takes to download a game and it would also mean that Steam would go down less.

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by GhostMotleyX:

The main thing Steam need to get is more servers, that would lower the time it takes to download a game and it would also mean that Steam would go down less.

They already have hundreds of servers for downloading, plus the ability to use third-party CDNs from companies like Akamai, Limelight and Amazon.

It's a separate system from the Store and Community servers, which are what were going down the other day.

[labyrinth]

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

How much is the kW/h price in italy?

It's somewhere around 0,20-0.30$. That guy probably doesn't know that those 900 euro is the price of gas+electricity for 2 or 3 months. Or maybe he's got some castle to light up.

[Spencer]

Originally posted by howlin' wolf:

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

How much is the kW/h price in italy?

It's somewhere around 0,20-0.30$. That guy probably doesn't know that those 900 euro is the price of gas+electricity for 2 or 3 months. Or maybe he's got some castle to light up.

Ok that makes more sense.... I know some of those countries screwed up their market subsidizing solar but 900 euro a month for electricty would break a country:P

[Tasslehoff]

Originally posted by howlin' wolf:

Originally posted by Muppet among Puppets:

How much is the kW/h price in italy?

It's somewhere around 0,20-0.30$. That guy probably doesn't know that those 900 euro is the price of gas+electricity for 2 or 3 months. Or maybe he's got some castle to light up.

Sorry to disappoint you but I don't have a castle (I also don't live in a city but in a small town north of Italy) and that bill was only for electricity; I never said it was the bill of one month (it was the bill i received last month), every year I spent between 2100 and 2400 euro only for electricity, for gas we have another company and another bill, and I assure you it's not cheap...

Originally posted by Spencer:

Ok that makes more sense.... I know some of those countries screwed up their market subsidizing solar but 900 euro a month for electricty would break a country:P

When you have no natural resources like Italy, when you have an inhabitant density like Italy, when you have no options like Italy, solar power is a choice...

Anyway we are OT, we are not discussing the energy strategy of a country, we are talking about a simple application that can also be done by a junior developer with a cross-platform language (java, python, ruby and many others) opening sockets via TLS and passing some parameters (for example and authentication code for download linked with the Steam account) for authorize the download of an archive same as a local backup of a Steam game.
It can be done with a GUI frontend or a simple CLI and can be run almost everywhere (also on smartphones).

It will provide a huge boost for DD and a great marketing return for Valve, if they want...