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Coronavirus: Steam applies changes in bandwidth to avoid saturations

March 31, 2020
Coronavirus: Steam applies changes in bandwidth to avoid saturations
Written by: Chris Watson
March 31, 2020
Updated on March 31, 2020
Lead Game DeveloperChris Watson
Chris Watson is a gaming expert and writer. He has loved video games since childhood and has been writing about them for over 15 years. Chris has worked for major gaming magazines where he reviewed new games and wrote strategy guides. He started his own gaming website to share insider tips and in-depth commentary about his favorite games. When he's not gaming or writing, Chris enjoys travel and hiking. His passion is helping other gamers master new games.
Expertises: Game Development, Unity and Unreal Engine, C# and C++ Programming, Interactive Storytelling, Esports and Streaming

Valve will shutdown automatic update downloads during the COVID-19 pandemic and report options we can control.

Valve has decided to act to be able to supply the Steam service to everyone without complications during the coronavirus. After registering several records of concurrent users since the confinement by COVID-19 began in many countries (23.4 million players as current peak), from the company of Gabe Newell they prefer to anticipate a possible overflow of their servers and will limit bandwidth during the pandemic.

"We know that with so many people at home trying to do things at the same time, your home's internet bandwidth could present problems," they begin by saying.

For starters, Steam has scheduled that the upcoming minor updates will no longer be automatic: “Starting this week, we will release these updates for several more days. Only games played in the last 3 days will be updated immediately ”, the rest will have to be done manually to reduce considerably the number of operations in the background.

Steam coronavirus

Likewise, Valve informs as a reminder the options that we can control manually from home to control bandwidth. "We believe that the best solution for most users is to take advantage of the features of scheduling and regulating downloads that exist on Steam to establish the optimal behavior that is best for you," which are the following:

  • Schedule automatic updates in Windows to prevent downloads from being applied during business hours (for example, moving them to early hours)
  • Deactivate automatic updates of games that we have installed but that we will not use soon.
  • Speed ​​up your own Steam connection to ease the burden on your network connection and thus help alleviate bandwidth loads if network traffic needs to be reduced in our area.
  • Take advantage of Library Folders settings to move games that don't play frequently from an SSD to a storage HDD.
    • About author

    Chris Watson is a gaming expert and writer. He has loved video games since childhood and has been writing about them for over 15 years. Chris has worked for major gaming magazines where he reviewed new games and wrote strategy guides. He started his own gaming website to share insider tips and in-depth commentary about his favorite games. When he's not gaming or writing, Chris enjoys travel and hiking. His passion is helping other gamers master new games.
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