Valve Making Steam Better

[Livin in a box]

I’m not sure Steam can get much better. In fact, if I had to choose one thing that I’d like to see improved with the service, I’d be hard pressed to think of anything aside from the fantastical like “make everything cheaper” or “speed up downloads”.

Hold on, that second one isn’t a pipe dream – Valve are actually going to make that happen.

In an open letter, published on the Steam website, Valve have laid out their plans for updating Steam. Basically, it comes down to three things:

Speeding up downloads at all times.
Increasing capacity so that they are better able to cope with spikes in use of the service, for example, when big games are released and everyone tries to download and play them at once.
Making it easier for publishers to get their content onto the service.
All things which will make the Steam store even more convenient to use and hopefully lead other download services – like the PSN, XBLA and EA’s new Origin service – to bolster their own bandwidth.

Oh, and Valve also throw out a little casual mention that DotA 2 will utilise the new distribution methods. So that’s as good as confirmation that DotA 2 is on the way very soon then. Hurrah![/p]

Source

TL;DR Valve are set to overhaul their content download system to enable faster downloading for all users and add more capacity so that the system can withstand spikes in downloading when a major game is released. No more Steam errors when trying to download a game!

Good news for everyone, especially when there are some high profile games coming later this year.

 

[Ace]

Sounds like a reasonable plan, although downloads have ALWAYS been fast for me, going up to about 8-12 MB/s. I'm not sure it's gonna go much faster, but I guess they'll deal with it the day I decide to buy a high profile title on launch day.

 

[shakirmoledina]

how many ppl can actually go above 10MB? i bet most ppl get around 2MB, am i wong?

 

[Ace]

how many ppl can actually go above 10MB? i bet most ppl get around 2MB, am i wong?

Well, with unlimited 100 Mbit/s, It's not entirely impossible. In fact, it's likely always around those speeds when I download

 

[Wizerzak]

This is good new for people with super fast internet connections but unfortunately this probably won't make a whole lot of difference to me.

 

[raulpica]

Finally. Steam took ages to download Portal 2 for me.

 

[Slyakin]

I hope they optimize it for people with slower internet speeds first.

I can download a game just fine; I don't need to download Crysis 3 in 5 seconds.

 

[Satangel]

Nice. And my internet finally upgraded too, finally I'm able to download things at 1 MB/s or more!

 

[purechaos996]

Downloaded 10Gbs in like an hour...Is that not fast? xD i'm not against it going faster but how much faster can they go?? Its already the best IMO.

 

[Livin in a box]

Downloaded 10Gbs in like an hour...Is that not fast? xD i'm not against it going faster but how much faster can they go?? Its already the best IMO.

Not during peak download times it's not. You can get like 150kb/s sometimes when a big game is just released.

 

[machomuu]

Great. Now get rid of the stupid "Limited User" thing.

 

[junkerde]

i remeber my download for Team Fortress 2 when it became free, steam servers fucken sucked ass, pos servers so slow.....a pain but i managed

 

[SamAsh07]

Bah, my download speeds dont go higher than 120 kbps. Can't even upgrade, ISPs here are rip offs, an 8 MBPS package comes at a monthly cost with which you could buy a brand new 3DS monthly -.-

 

[Bladexdsl]

how many ppl can actually go above 10MB? i bet most ppl get around 2MB, am i wong?

i can get 12mb...most of the time

 

[injected11]

I've read that they will start using a new patch/update process that only alters the parts of existing files that need to be changed, rather than downloading an entire replacement file every time. Should save them some server strain, and save us time (assuming it works right).

i remeber my download for Team Fortress 2 when it became free, steam servers fucken sucked ass, pos servers so slow.....a pain but i managed

Neat. You're complaining about a slow download during one of the, if not THE busiest time for their servers this year, as they give you a full-fledged game for free.

 

[Foxi4]

1. No Half-Life Ep.3
2. STILL the exact same Source Engine that still has the original Quake I pubes on it. Isn't it about time to stop improving and start programming something *new*? You know, like, everybody else? Portal 2 got to a point where you were thrown back to the Desktop each 15 nanoseconds, usually in the worst moments imaginable, due to critical errors. DITCH.THE.SOURCE.

Sorry Valve, you'll have to try harder to impress me.

 

[Jamstruth]

1. No Half-Life Ep.3
2. STILL the exact same Source Engine that still has the original Quake I pubes on it. Isn't it about time to stop improving and start programming something *new*? You know, like, everybody else? Portal 2 got to a point where you were thrown back to the Desktop each 15 nanoseconds, usually in the worst moments imaginable, due to critical errors. DITCH.THE.SOURCE.

Sorry Valve, you'll have to try harder to impress me.

Never had that problem with Portal 2. It has never crashed on either of the computers I've used it on. I do agree that Valve need to program a new Engine and make a big new release for it to launch it. SOmething as moddable and versatile as Source is kind of hard to give up on though...

 

[DSGamer64]

Downloaded 10Gbs in like an hour...Is that not fast? xD i'm not against it going faster but how much faster can they go?? Its already the best IMO.

Half the time I only get 500Kb a second, the other half of the time I cap out my download speed. I'd prefer to have capped download speed on my service ALL the time, not 50% of the time.

 

[Richy Freeway]

Don't care about download speeds, that's not an issue.

What is an issue is that of the 4 user accounts I have on my PC, we have 2 seperate steam accounts.

Steam never remembers the password for either account anyway, and my steam account can remain logged in when my son is in his user profile, so he has to log out of steam and put his details in.

I ended up buying Super Meat Boy twice, so he could play it too. Turns out I wasted my money, as I could have just copied the folder.

Make Steam work with multiple users! It's such a BASIC thing to have. At least make it remember my fscking password!

 

[stinkoman]

Everything cheaper? Steam games are some of the cheapest games I've bought, dude.