Terrible Big Picture Lag - Solved

[Mad Dog Torx]

MY SOLUTION: Unfollow over 2000 games and leave unimportant groups.

When I bought a Steam Link and tried to use Big Picture mode I found it impossible to use due to lag. I'm talking 30 seconds of lag followed by a spike of activity for a split second - on repeat.

After hours of research I still didn't make Big Picture mode work. One day I suddenly hypothesized that the number of games that I follow may be causing performance issues.

So, I spent several days unfollowing games (Valve this was a painfully slow experience), and low and behold the steam client is more responsive and Big Picture Mode works! I still follow 160 games/groups, but it seems this is in the realms of an acceptable.

I'm sharing my experience here in case anyone else encounters this issue too, and in the remote likelihood that someone at Valve can do something about it - I do miss the dev updates!!

[󠁳⁧⁧󠁳⁧⁧󠁳󠁳]

Leave unmportant groups :)

[Willie D. Longpong]

This has helped me as well. I'm still following a heroic amount of games but I've slashed the number by a huge amount and the overlay is massively improved.

I had basically the same symptoms and I have spent MONTHS going back and forth with steam support. Absolutely useless.

I wish I had thought of this earlier. Thanks.

[Mad Dog Torx]

So glad my post was useful for someone else!

[Willie D. Longpong]

Not as glad as I am. I must have hit a "Follow" critical mass last February 2016. I won't go into all the things I've done in the time between now and then but after exhausting everything I could think of, went as far as building an entirely new pc. I took "process of elimination" as far as I thought I could.

After going back and forth with Valve for literally months and getting less than nowhere, I retired the idea of anything logical fixing it and was waiting on some miracle dropping out of the sky.

Every now and then I would go searching for the same old things and getting the same results, but today I found this.

[✘GreedoShotFirst✘]

Someone should contact valve with a link to this thread (the solution). They definitely need to optimize BPM for followed games/groups. This is ridiculous because this has been a problem since BPM's inception. Valve are honestly one of the most inefficent developers and this is just another example of it, to have not fixed this after years of being an issue is incompetent.

[Willie D. Longpong]

I don't think steam support is the best way to report this.

I kept repeating stuff along the lines of...

"Keep in mind that all my problems vanish when I log in with an alternate account. Same machine, same installation, same games(via library sharing) and zero problems"

I kept being told to..

"try this and that, here is a troubleshooting guide.... uninstall all of these things.. here is another long list of things to do".

I told them I had bought and built a new PC and that I had tried running steam with literally nothing but video drivers, both AMD and Nvidia, Windows 7 and 10. I doubt they are paid enough to think creatively or use deductive reasoning.

Does anyone have a reliable path to someone not working from a script?

I would love to know what the connection is between following games and incredibly poor Big Picture performance.

[✘GreedoShotFirst✘]

I didn't mean Steam Support. You can actually contact Valve employee's via the Valve website and there are a few Steam Controller/ Big Picture mode support (dedicated) emails floating around the Steam Controller forums and reddit that you email to contact the people who are seamingly more close to the controllers and Big Picture Mode's development.

I'll need to find them again and send an email to them.

[Orange-Box]

I think games are not optimization becase Skyrim, L4D2, and other game they work are maybe (fix) but other (but I do not know better)

[Mad Dog Torx]

This thread has nothing to do with games. It refers only to Steam client performance in Big Picture Mode.