[solved] What the heck is up with Steam game updates?

[ZedClampet]

Problem solved thanks to @Colif I've looked at that download settings page 100 times and for some reason was misreading it. I guess after the first time I misread it, I never bothered to read it again.

I feel like this should be like a Seinfeld airline food joke , but seriously, what's up with Steam game updates? I've got 5 TB of storage and quite a few games downloaded, and I have to go through and manually update them because Steam does weird things like saying it will update a game two weeks from Wednesday at 4:17 a.m. Why would I want to wait until two weeks from Wednesday? Why at 4:17? I understand they are trying to help the load on the Internet with more people staying at home, but the North American Internet load will be just fine tonight at 1:00 a.m. Why not then? And if I turn off my computer at night when something is supposed to update (which I usually always do to save power), Steam just pushes the date back to something crazy again.

If I knew that games would update every night at 1:00 a.m. local time, I'd set my system to turn on at 12:55 and turn off again at 1:30. I'd get my games updated and save some energy. The haphazard way it is set-up now is impossible to work with.

*old man shakes fist at sky*

 

[Colif]

Have you set active hours - You can also limit the times during the day when Steam updates your games. From your downloads settings (Steam > Settings > Downloads) check the Only auto-update games box and specify the time when Steam should perform auto-updates. For example, selecting '12AM' And '8AM' would mean that Steam will only download auto-updated games between midnight and 8 AM your local time.

Steam Support :: Managing Steam Downloads & Updates

support.steampowered.com

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/371965/how-does-steam-decide-when-to-update-my-games

 

[Colif]

could be just the order of updates and if you didn't have a time set, maybe you have lots in the list? Making a time it updates in could just extend your waiting time.

 

[Zloth]

My guess (very much a guess) is that Steam is trying to prevent pointless downloads. If you download an update every night this week for a single game but don't play that game until Saturday, Steam had to deliver a bunch of bytes for no reason. That's bad for you, too, if you are on some sort of download limit. So, they look at how often you play a game, then make a barely educated guess as to when it would be best to download the update.

If you've got really fast download speeds, you could just shut off updates completely and only update games right before you play them.

 

[ZedClampet]

Have you set active hours - You can also limit the times during the day when Steam updates your games. From your downloads settings (Steam > Settings > Downloads) check the Only auto-update games box and specify the time when Steam should perform auto-updates. For example, selecting '12AM' And '8AM' would mean that Steam will only download auto-updated games between midnight and 8 AM your local time.

Steam Support :: Managing Steam Downloads & Updates

support.steampowered.com

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/371965/how-does-steam-decide-when-to-update-my-games

Problem solved. Thanks, man. As I noted above, I must have misread that section the first time I went in there and ignored it from then on.

They still pick random days to do it on, but at least they have a set time now.

 

[Colif]

The random days could be more to fit it into some schedule at their end perhaps.