I’ve been using Steam for game delivery for some time now. Even when I own physical copies of the games I use the service to download them, safe in the knowledge that the original media is safe.

As I write this, I’m fortunate that I have a high speed Internet connection – 50 Mb/s – however it wasn’t always this way. The benefits of optical cables aside, the distance from my home to the local telephone exchange meant that ADSL was never going to offer more than 2 Mb/s, something that is hardly ideal for online gaming and downloading.

Aug 20, 2017 - The very short explanation is that closing all games. Things, to see a download is taking forever, to check what is wrong with my network.

One of the areas in which my connection regularly suffered was buying games on Steam, or installing server and SDK frameworks for playing mods. What I know now would have helped immensely back then, potentially enabling downloads that took all night long to complete in a fraction of the time.

Throttling At The Steam End

You don’t even have to be on a low 2 Mb/s connection to get a low download speed from Steam. Due to the massive demand on their servers, the company engages in sort of bandwidth-throttling process in order to reduce impact and enable them to manage multiple connections at any one time.

If your connection has been restricted and you’re chugging along at a paltry 250 Kb/s, there is something that you can do with the Steam client’s settings to enable a faster download speed, limited not by the Steam servers but by your ISP’s connection speed.

Before you do this, however, make sure you have closed any non-essential apps that might be hogging bandwidth. Chat programs, downloaders and streaming video would all come under this description, as might any application upgrades that are taking place.

Choose a New Server

Visiting this page will display a line graph detailing Steam’s bandwidth over the past 48 hours.

More crucially, however, is the list of bar charts below this, each of which represents a server and how busy it is; the shorter the bar, the lower the number of users. Note, however, that you should look for a server that is nearby – choosing an Australian Steam server when you’re in the UK isn’t a good idea.

Choose a server that is close and with a low number of users and open View > Settings. In the Download+Cloud tab, first ensure that your Internet connection is correctly specified – alter the Approximate speed of your Internet connection drop-down box as appropriate.

The real magic in this process comes here: click the Download region drop-down and select the server you identified earlier. All you need to do now is click OK to confirm and then restart Steam for the changes to take effect.

Note that the server list is updated automatically as new servers are brought online and old units are retired. As such you should check every few months that your connection has not been updated to a slower server.

Improving Speeds In Windows

There is another way in which you can improve download speeds from Steam, but this is a much more general method that will have an effect on everything you do online. How to hack an instagram account no survey or download. Using the Windows QoS Packet Scheduler any restrictions on download speeds can be removed as follows.

Hit WINKey +R and enter gpedit.msc in the box – the Group Policy window will open. From here, expand Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > QoS Packet Scheduler.

In the right-side pane, double click to open Limit Reversible Bandwidth, and select the Enable radio button, setting the Bandwidth limit (%) to 0%.

When done, click Apply, then OK. Any popular Internet speed detection tool can then be used to check the effect of this change.

Effective Changes, Easily Made

Why Is Steam Taking So Long To Download Games For Kids

Both of these changes can seriously impact the speed of your downloads from Steam, with the latter coming in useful beyond the popular online gaming community and DRM system. There should be no side effects – in every case of this alteration being made that I’m aware of, the end user has been left very happy with the results.

Why Is Steam Taking So Long To Download Games Without

Of course, both of these solutions are limited by the speed on offer by your ISP, so if you have any continuing download speed issues these will need to be addressed with the appropriate body.

1. There's a writing mistake, which actually confused me alot, lol. In the HTML-Source-code, it's at line 985 in the first em-Tag. It's Reservable, not Reversible.

   :)

2. why i didn't have QoS

3. Thanks! Great advice.
   For those who have a version of Windows that doesn't have gpedit.msc (Win 7 Home, Win 8), there is a fix here:
   http://www.askvg.com/how-to-enable-group-policy-editor-gpedit-msc-in-windows-7-home-premium-home-basic-and-starter-editions/

   (Moderator, I understand if you edit out the link. Thanks again!)

4. it seems like you are using an old version of windows. cause i can't get it to work on windows 7. a replay on what i can do would be really appreciated.

5. Thanks!Im going to use steam now

6. Thanks! I'll have this in the back of my mind when I download games from Steam!

7. Steam it is..

8. Thanks a lot! Just switched to Steam for all my game deliveries.

9. I’ve used PEAKNFLOW.com for several small projects. Very cheap rates. Thanks very much for this professional and effective guide and nice platform and good content keep it up..

10. thank you chris for the tip

11. You have to have a business addition or ultimate to have gpedit.msc. I tried and found my answer on forums. So the question is is my bandwidth still limited by windows if I have no group policy?

    • Why are you cheaping on operating system? BUY ultimate, if you can't use it as pirated software, like me. Ultimate is really candy, thnx Billy :)

12. Good to know if someday I get speed throttled by steam.

    • Yeah, unlikely considering it is Steam, but good to know!

For some gamers, the advent of the digital marketplace has been an immeasurable boon. For others, particularly those of us with slow connections and/or tight data caps, it's not. For that second group, there's some bad news regarding the coming launch of Fallout 4: Even if you install from a disc, at least part of the game will have to be downloaded from Steam.

The word came from Pete Hines, Bethesda's Vice President of PR and Marketing, who confirmed on Twitter last week that the physical release of the game will include both a disc and a Steam key, and that the disc will have 'actual install data' on it. But in a follow-up, he added that while the game will be installed from the disc, 'You will still have to download from Steam. The disc doesn't contain the entire game.'

This is not unreasonable, or even unusual. Most major game releases these days require hefty launch-day patches anyway, and as Hines pointed out, the console versions of the game will be on Blu-ray discs, which can store 25GB per layer, while the PC version will be on DVDs that hold just 4.7GB. But when pressed about why PC games in general are so often restricted this way, he offered a simple, one-word answer: 'Piracy.'

That response went over about as well as you'd expect, but Hines was unapologetic. 'We've been doing it this way more or less for 10+ years,' he tweeted. 'Seems to be doing ok. Lots of people bought Skyrim, Wolf, etc.'

I know as well as anyone how intensely frustrating and infuriating a mandatory, multi-gigabyte download on a wonky connection can be, especially when the game you purchased is sitting beside you on a disc. I mean, it's right there, right? And there is literally nothing you can do about it but wait, and maybe fire a few crappy emails into the digital ether—or do without. Which leads to the obvious question: Will this push any of you away from Fallout 4 on launch day?

Fallout 4 comes out on November 10.

Plug the sync cable of your portable media player into a USB port on the front of your Xbox 360 console. Start a game, and then press the Guide button on your controller. Choose Select Music. Select the location of the music you want to hear (hard drive or a connected media player). How to download music on xbox 360 for free.

Why Is Steam Taking So Long To Download Games For Windows 10

Thanks, VG247.