On steam if you go into offline mode, then restart the client you can start a game without updating.
You can also set specific games to not update automatically.
unless this changed in the last 2 years, steam detects if a game has an “update pending” so regardless if you go offline, if it detected there was an update it prevents the game from launching. I tried to get around my parents crap download with that trick and it failed.
Which is stupid! I want to play.
Well my Internet connection makes it a 3 Minute wait for 40 gigs.
But steam should stop the Update if I want to play
A workaround you can do is, before launching steam disconnect from the internet, then launch steam, when it launches it will say no connection and give an option to launch in offline mode, once offline mode is launched you can turn your internet back on. Just keep in mind steam also has to refresh your games every once and awhile as well so you have to go online at /some/ point or it won’t let you play the game offline anymore. Steam is super annoying in that matter.
There are multiple settings for that.
edit: I just attempted this again on my laptop, they have slightly fixed the issue. If an update is queued when you’re online you can remove it from the queue and then go offline and you can play it again. However if you are online you still need to update in order to play the game. This is much better than what it used to be, which was if it detected that you need an update even if you canceled the update and went offline it would say update required.
old post: If you could point me to these settings that you indicate it would be much appreciated,
Please be aware that if the setting your indicating is the allow background updates or the prevent auto updates. While that will make it so the game will not update automatically it will still register the game as requiring update which means if you go offline it won’t let you play the game until the update has been done.
I’m going to go test it again because it’s been a while since I’ve tried update in a few minutes
it will still register the game as requiring update which means if you go offline it won’t let you play the game until the update has been done.
Didn’t know that. Yup, that’s bad.
Last week, simply restarting (exiting and opening) the client got around that.
That’s why I like old offline games like Skyrim, the only updates I get are mods and when I want. Or I can just turn updates off.
old offline games like Skyrim
Oof! You’re technically right since it’s from 2011 and the “forced online single player games” scourge is endemic by now, but that made me feel ancient 😬😂
Goddamn MS Flight Sim is on Steam, but doesn’t update with Steam and forces you to choke down a 40GB update after you launch the game.
OMG YES! That shit was like a sleezy bait-and-switch, hiding that chungus download behind the initial installer.
Lmao yep that is exactly what happened to me and I audibly exclaimed “what the actual fuck”
This was my first thought, too. I loathe that STUPID MUSIC by now. I can hear it as I type this. “Duuuuuun duuuuuuuun dooooooo…” Over and over and over and over.
As a Gameboy Color user, I am unfamiliar.
Man I haven’t had slow internet in so long I forgot people still struggle like this. My heart goes out to you peeps.
Disable automatic downloads if it isn’t a multiplayer game, and if it is get a singleplayer plan b game (make sure to allow downloads in the background if on steam that way the other game updates while you play)
Can’t just shut down comp too, it really wants to update, now ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Oh wow, I didn’t even consider checking for updates while I’m working from home.
Yeah Steam Deck is cool but…god DAMN the update frequency.
Fibre optic ;)
cries in ps4 wifi capped at 450 Mbps
Fibre is so good that you can still have internet from it after you cancel. It’s not much, it’s really really low drops of it, but it’s still there.
BWAAAAAH!
Flight simulator every time
Is there no decent ISP where you live?
Let’s consider a “decent” Internet speed of 200 mb/a. That’s 25 MB/s so it’d take 1,600 seconds to download 40,000 MB. That’s 26 minutes, so nearly half of your time is gone. Plus there is always time spent doing something like “installing”, checking the files, or whatever other stuff needs to be done besides just downloading the raw content.
Also, you don’t always get 100% of your advertised Internet speed 100% of the time.
Until just a year or two ago a 40gb update would take as much as 3 or 4 days to download and it would take up almost all of my data. Even most of America still has shitty internet.
Tbh I would not consider 200 decent. Gigabit minimum in 2023
Don’t pretend that any more than 1% of users would use anywhere near that much bandwidth. Even if you had five devices streaming 4K video all at once, you’d barely saturate a 200 Mb/s connection.
Large file transfers are the exception, not the norm. People don’t tend to regularly download or upload several gigabyte files on a daily basis. Maybe 2-3% of people who are either tech enthusiasts or graphics designers/artists/film makers do that but nobody else does, and even then 200-400 Mb/s will still be fine, nowhere near a hair-pullingly slow experience.
It doesn’t matter, I have a decent bandwidth and still end up losing interest while updating the OS and then the game I intend to play. I end up on TikTok or playing Switch.
Back home a 40gb download was balls. 40 was almost my whole weekend at 1.2 down.
I recently moved to a place with fiber and paid out the ass for gigabit. I just got a new game on Steam that was 130GB, and it downloaded in about 30-35 minutes. Insanity.
Yeah fiber so so good, I pay like $22 each month for 500 mbps. It’s a bit expensive so I don’t dare go for full gig
I once had a full gig fiber connection for free in my student apartment, it was glorious. Before that I had like 50 mbps so it’s hard to go back to that after the full gig
$22 has to be bundled with something like phone right? $22 for 500 is crazy cheap.
It’s cheap? Well call me ignorant or uninformed then.
But no it’s just the internet plan with a discount of $11 per month because my apartment complex has some deal with the internet provider.
Well I guess it depends on your Country/State, the cheapest fiber in my area is $50 for 500mbps
