Almost everyone seems to be caught at residence proper now due the Covid-19 lockdown, and whether or not you’re working or gaming, your web bandwidth is probably going being soaked up much more than regular. Steam is without doubt one of the worst offenders in relation to devouring bandwidth, usually utilizing a bit greater than its fair proportion. So to assist out with how a lot it’s utilizing, Valve are rescheduling these pesky auto-updates for games you most likely forgot you had, to unencumber a few of that valuable bandwidth at peak instances. They’ve additionally given a helpful reminder of some choices you may change your self to additional minimise your utilization, too.
With games you haven’t performed in ages, Steam already postpones auto-update downloads till off-peak instances. Now Valve have announced they’re going even additional, and “are now spreading these updates out over several more days.” It principally means all that stuff you’ve put in however haven’t touched shortly will probably be up to date at a couple of separate instances within the week when bandwidth utilization is often decrease (late at night time, or within the early hours). This solely impacts games you haven’t performed for 3 days or longer although, so stuff you’re taking part in recurrently ought to nonetheless see their regular replace instances. You can nonetheless power updates to obtain instantly, if you would like.
Valve added they’re “also looking into additional solutions to help on [their] side”. In the meantime, they’ve given a couple of options of issues you are able to do to assist your self – like disabling auto-updates for games you don’t play a lot, throttling your personal connection to Steam, and scheduling your personal auto-updates. Steam has recommendation on how you are able to do all these issues and extra over here.
“We know a lot of you (like us here at Valve) are stuck at home right now trying to work or attend school remotely. Or maybe you’re just playing a bunch of great games on Steam,” Valve stated. “Whatever the case may be, we know that with so many people at home trying to get things done at the same time, it can put a stress on your home’s internet bandwidth.”
Since the pandemic lockdowns began, Steam has continuously broken its peak concurrent users record, and it doesn’t appear to be that’ll be slowing down any time quickly.
Valve are usually not the one ones attempting to cope with bandwidth issues. Akamai, a world server host utilized by a variety of gaming firms, is starting to throttle video game downloads in certain places at key times, too.
