There has been a surge of gamers accessing Steam as more and more people get stuck at home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Having more people at home accessing the internet will likely put stress on internet bandwidth. With that in mind, Steam thought it would be the perfect time to make some adjustments with the Steam Client’s way of handing downloads and updates with the aim of helping users manage their home bandwidth better. Below are some of the adjustments rolled out for the Steam Client.
Auto-Updates
For games that haven’t been playing lately, Steam will be scheduling updates during off-peak hours based on the user’s local time period. Only games that’s been played for the last 3 days will be automatically updated. As always, automatic updates will run immediately if the user runs the game but users can opt to initiate the update or pause updates indefinitely through the Download Manager.Options You Can Control
Aside from the changes to auto-updates, there are a number of options users can control in Steam Client. Tweaking these options can help users find the best solution for managing their home bandwidth. Here are some of Steam’s recommendations below.- Schedule auto-update windows to avoid auto-updates when running other applications for remote work or online classes for students.
- If you don’t play a game in your library often, you can keep it installed but choose to no longer download automatic updates.
- You can self-throttle your own connection to Steam. This might ease the load on your network connection and may help ease bandwidth loads if network traffic in your area needs to be reduced.
- Take advantage of Library Folders settings, so you can move infrequently-played games from an SSD to a storage HDD. This is usually better for you (and your bandwidth) rather than uninstalling the game and needing to re-download it later.
Steam created a help page for managing Steam downloads and updates here.
Source: Steam Community
