Steam Changes Auto-Updates To Save Bandwidth

It seems like every weekend since the Coronavirus outbreak Steam has been setting new user records. We’ve seen streaming services like Netflix and YouTube turn down their default streaming quality and PlayStation Network throttle downloads to help with bandwidth issues. Steam is making a similar, but not so drastic change to help with the heavy load on their servers. Steam will now only auto-update games that you have played within the last three days.

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Now you’ll still be able to manually download updates for games whenever you want, but auto-updates that are scheduled overnight will now be spread over multiple days. Valve has explained all of this in a recent blog post.

Steam also reminds users who may be working from home to schedule auto-update windows to ensure that Steam doesn’t start updating a game while you’re in the middle of your work day.

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