[Question] Steam game update scheduler.

[Sonic]

Does anyone knows how Steam chooses to schedule game updates?it seems random, TF2 was scheduled 2 hours later while Dota2 was 1 hour later.


Does anyone know what trigger changes at which time the game is updated?or is it random?

[Cyber-Freak]

Games updates happen when they are ready.

Valve the company operates multiple divisions, they don't necessairly cross-talk especially when updates are going to happen. (TF2, DOTA, and Steam, and whatever else is in R&D)

I'm sure the devs talk to each other, but otherwise each project has their own dedicated people.

So in short, steam sends out updates when development teams upload them to Steam.

[Bumbefly (we/All)]

What CyberFreak said.
To claryfie a bit more : The message that updates are scheduled for a particular time is a new function, asside from the function we can use to change load-priority.

[Taylor Sherman]

Hi Everyone,

Yes, this is new behavior. We don't have every online Steam instance begin downloading every update immediately, instead we spread them out in time a few hours to distribute the network load. If you click Play or the up-arrow button by the game in the Downloads page, Steam will begin downloading it immediately for you.

Taylor

[MaddDoktor [Linux]]

I noticed what Taylor Sherman said. For example a TF2 update may just say "queued" instead of downloading immediately when you start Steam, and if you go to play the game, then the update starts downloading.

[Sonic]

Originally posted by Taylor Sherman:

Hi Everyone,

Yes, this is new behavior. We don't have every online Steam instance begin downloading every update immediately, instead we spread them out in time a few hours to distribute the network load. If you click Play or the up-arrow button by the game in the Downloads page, Steam will begin downloading it immediately for you.

Taylor

Hello Taylor, thank you for the information. I just asked because, sometimes I ended up having to wait for the game to be updated only when I am about to play. Not that is bad but it's somewhat inconvinient once I am about to play the update has not downloaded yet. For example, I was about to hit some Payday 2 with some friends some days ago and I had to download around 2.9GB of update because it wasn't done since it was released, so I ended up having to wait some time considering my HDD is quite slow.

Though now I understand why that is the reason, and it's actually fine. I guess that what was missing was already added though, when it will be updated, that is a good information.

I was just asking because if I could make some games I play the most to update faster than the ones I play more seldom when I have more than 1 game to be updated it would be nice.

[DuDE|StanGe]

thanks for the info Taylor.
i can see the reasoning behind this new behavoiur. as the steam community grows, so grows the load of the network itself. with ever increasing game size, patch notes, dlc and so on, it must be hard to blance the load perfectly. so, one way is to spread out the download queues. and i don't have a problem downloadig a patch a few hours later for a game, that i have installed but currently don't play very often. But there are games that i'd like to update ASAP (MP titles, titles with unusual larg patches and so on). Does changing the "Udate Priority" to "High" via the game settings change this behaviour? So that i can manually set which games get the update ASAP and which games get a scheduled update? would be good to know.

[Sonic]

Originally posted by DuDE|StanGe:

thanks for the info Taylor.
i can see the reasoning behind this new behavoiur. as the steam community grows, so grows the load of the network itself. with ever increasing game size, patch notes, dlc and so on, it must be hard to blance the load perfectly. so, one way is to spread out the download queues. and i don't have a problem downloadig a patch a few hours later for a game, that i have installed but currently don't play very often. But there are games that i'd like to update ASAP (MP titles, titles with unusual larg patches and so on). Does changing the "Udate Priority" to "High" via the game settings change this behaviour? So that i can manually set which games get the update ASAP and which games get a scheduled update? would be good to know.

Oh just now I found there was such setting O.o
Thank you for letting me know, this will be useful for sure.

[DuDE|StanGe]

yeah those settings were introduced some time ago. but as of yet, i don't know if they affect the update scheduler.

[Taylor Sherman]

Hi Everyone,

Oh yes, I should have mentioned: if you set the game to High Priority, it will begin to download the update as soon as it is released.

regards,
Taylor

[DuDE|StanGe]

ahh thats good to know. thanks for the reply.

[FuzZy]

isn't the scheduler isn't available in the settings? I mean it scheduled by itself, why?

[Sonic]

Thank you for letting us know

[Styl1sh]

Is there a way, or will there be one to set all games to update immediately?

[Hero989]

Originally posted by Taylor Sherman:

Hi Everyone,

Oh yes, I should have mentioned: if you set the game to High Priority, it will begin to download the update as soon as it is released.

regards,
Taylor

sadly that didn't work for me taking a 34.5 GB download that would normally be download in around an hour around 7 hours to download because the stupid steam downloader keeps scheduling it for ten to fifteen minutes later, then when the time arrives it downloads 10 MB then reschedules it to resume ten to fifteen minutes later again.
Even when I push the up arrow for it to start up again it does it for 2 to 6 seconds then stops again, very douchey.

[WACOMalt]

So to get every game to update automatically immediately when an update is available, I now have to right click over 400 games individually and set them to high priority updates? This is silly...