Just a few days after Sony announced its plans to slow down PS4 download speeds in response to the coronavirus situation, Valve has announced that it is making a similar move with Steam’s auto-update feature.
The coronavirus pandemic and the growing number of people being forced to stay home have led to a record amount of traffic on Steam and other networks, resulting in a greater strain on both the networks’ servers and the internet bandwidth of millions of users. That’s why, starting this week, Steam will change up auto-updates by limiting immediate updates to the games players have played within the last three days.
“We know a lot of you (like us here at Valve) are stuck at home right now trying to work or attend school remotely. Or maybe you're just playing a bunch of great games on Steam,” an official Valve blog post reads. “Whatever the case may be, we know that with so many people at home trying to get things done at the same time, it can put a stress on your home’s internet bandwidth.”
In addition to the auto-update throttling, Valve states that Steam users have a number of options that they can control on their end, including the option to schedule auto-update windows, throttle their connections themselves, and even disable automatic updates for games they don’t play often. Combined with Steam’s built-in library management features, this could go a long way in making users’ Steam experience smoother in spite of increasing bandwidth demands.
Source: Steam