Whats up with patch sizes these days?

dr.stevil

dr.stevil

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Aliens Vs Predator, on the first update, seemed to take forever to download on my connection (temporarily on a 768K dsl at the moment).

Now with the new steam interface, I noticed that you can actually see the size of the update and the amount downloaded so far. These are the latest, all while TF2 was, I believe, around 90MB

AvP - 8,441.0MB
COD:MW2 - 6,423.8MB
COD:MW2 Multiplayer - 11,472.2MB

jesus, what the hell is in these patches? I can understand it if it were a full blown expansion, but this seems a little excessive
 
Bigger games equals bigger patches. Just kind of the way it goes. Games have gotten a lot bigger and more complex in the last few years and patches follow suit.
 
I have AvP on retail disc and the entire game was "only" 4.6 GB.

I think what you are seeing is the whole game download.:eek:
 
PornoSatan said:
Those aren't patches, you're reading it wrong.
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that's what I thought at first too until I saw the TF2 update

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Do you honestly believe a patch would be 8-11GB?

Just think about it for a minute.
 
AceCR42 said:
Do you honestly believe a patch would be 8-11GB?

Just think about it for a minute.
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No, not normally... hence this thread lol

I mean, look at Garys mod and TF2 (which are done updating). 14.2MB/14.2MB and 83.8MB/83.8MB

unless steam is being screwy... but like I said, AVP and MW2 have been taking forever to download.
 
An 11GB patch would be mental!

I think the Crysis install is about 12GB and that's the largest game file I ever seen.
 
there were some problems with the new UI in beta where it wouldn't recognize a game and wanted to re download the whole thing. I had it, maybe its not entirely fixed
 
It's a steam bug with the interface. It claimed that it was patching torchlight (~1.5 gb), which I thought was odd, a 1.5 gb patch... until it finished within a minute. It's clearly displaying the wrong numbers. Nothing to get worked up over.

An 11GB patch would be mental!

I think the Crysis install is about 12GB and that's the largest game file I ever seen.
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Age of Conan was almost 30 gb out of the box (on the several DVD's it came in). No idea what it's at now with all the updates that MMO games get constantly.
 
dr.stevil said:
Aliens Vs Predator, on the first update, seemed to take forever to download on my connection (temporarily on a 768K dsl at the moment).

Now with the new steam interface, I noticed that you can actually see the size of the update and the amount downloaded so far. These are the latest, all while TF2 was, I believe, around 90MB

AvP - 8,441.0MB
COD:MW2 - 6,423.8MB
COD:MW2 Multiplayer - 11,472.2MB

jesus, what the hell is in these patches? I can understand it if it were a full blown expansion, but this seems a little excessive
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yup like some one else aready said.. the games are getting bigger.. also with most patches they are adding more features to the games like maps, weapons, units.. shit like that..


Kel said:
An 11GB patch would be mental!

I think the Crysis install is about 12GB and that's the largest game file I ever seen.
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havent played star wars: the force unleashed ultimate sith edition eh? 25 mother friggin gigs for a game that could of been done with less then 8 gigs.. almost 18 gigs of the crap installed is just audio files that arent even needed nor used by the game because they were to cheap to port the game to PC correctly..
 
New ui fucked over a game for me, and, like you, steam re-dl'ed it.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
havent played star wars: the force unleashed ultimate sith edition eh? 25 mother friggin gigs for a game that could of been done with less then 8 gigs.. almost 18 gigs of the crap installed is just audio files that arent even needed nor used by the game because they were to cheap to port the game to PC correctly..
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Considering the company LA hired to port it, I'm shocked that the game works on the PC at all.
 
interesting, so steam is freaking out and re-downloading the games all over again? Is there a fix for this? Or are you pretty much SOL at the moment?

that's a lot of data to be pushing on a 768K line lol. It's going to take all weekend to get them back.
 
dr.stevil said:
interesting, so steam is freaking out and re-downloading the games all over again? Is there a fix for this? Or are you pretty much SOL at the moment?

that's a lot of data to be pushing on a 768K line lol. It's going to take all weekend to get them back.
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hell im just happy for some odd reason 3/4 of the games ive bought on steam years ago started downloading out of no were.. before the UI update it didnt show i owned any of the games.. which made me quit using steam.. since i was bored and MW2 was free this weekend i redownloaded steam and all of a sudden i noticed 25 games queued up and downloading which never showed up in the old UI..
 
Derangel said:
Bigger games equals bigger patches. Just kind of the way it goes. Games have gotten a lot bigger and more complex in the last few years and patches follow suit.
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Also more buggy games. Funny how for almost 3 decades, games shipped almost bug free on consoles. All of a sudden, now that you can hook up the Internet to them, they start shipping with sometimes game breaking bugs.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
havent played star wars: the force unleashed ultimate sith edition eh? 25 mother friggin gigs for a game that could of been done with less then 8 gigs.. almost 18 gigs of the crap installed is just audio files that arent even needed nor used by the game because they were to cheap to port the game to PC correctly..
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Yeah I bought that a week or two back and was shocked at its size, especially since here in Aus we have pretty bad download limits.

But still, I'm glad they decided to port it, its a fun game. Just a shame it was ported like shit. As much as dont like the consolization of PC games, being someone who doesn't own any current gen consoles means I appreciate the ports ;)
 
bigdogchris said:
Also more buggy games. Funny how for almost 3 decades, games shipped almost bug free on consoles. All of a sudden, now that you can hook up the Internet to them, they start shipping with sometimes game breaking bugs.
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Games NEVER shipped bug free. There is no such thing as a bug free game. There have been a number of console games over the years with game breaking bugs. A semi-recent example is the original edition of Star Ocean 3 on the PS2. It was pretty bugged out so tri-Ace and SE released a Director's Cut that fixed a lot of the problems and that is the version they gave the US.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
havent played star wars: the force unleashed ultimate sith edition eh? 25 mother friggin gigs for a game that could of been done with less then 8 gigs.. almost 18 gigs of the crap installed is just audio files that arent even needed nor used by the game because they were to cheap to port the game to PC correctly..
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anti-piracy. who wants to download 25 gigs?
 
Its amazing how many people actually believe that patches are that big.

Its just steam downloading the client those are not patches.
 
Silverghost said:
anti-piracy. who wants to download 25 gigs?
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lol you think 25 gigs would be anti-piracy.. if they cant stop people from downloading bluray sources at 35+ gigs 25 gigs wont stop anyone :p

Tudz said:
Yeah I bought that a week or two back and was shocked at its size, especially since here in Aus we have pretty bad download limits.

But still, I'm glad they decided to port it, its a fun game. Just a shame it was ported like shit. As much as dont like the consolization of PC games, being someone who doesn't own any current gen consoles means I appreciate the ports ;)
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i thought the game was quite boring.. no real skill involved in it except for the couple of half ass puzzles to finish an objective.. gave up on the game after about a day or so..
 
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sirmonkey1985 said:
lol you think 25 gigs would be anti-piracy.. if they cant stop people from downloading bluray sources at 35+ gigs 25 gigs wont stop anyone :p
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If you make a game large and bad enough, no one would download it. It would be the perfect anti-piracy. Of course no one would buy it also. :p
 
siliconnerd said:
If you make a game large and bad enough, no one would download it. It would be the perfect anti-piracy. Of course no one would buy it also. :p
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I dunno, if someone made a 100GB game I bet a number of people would buy it or download it just to see what the fark they managed to fill up all that space with. Hell I'd buy it just to show off the all the DVDs it came with.
 
Derangel said:
I dunno, if someone made a 100GB game I bet a number of people would buy it or download it just to see what the fark they managed to fill up all that space with. Hell I'd buy it just to show off the all the DVDs it came with.
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Alot of people wouldn't be able to without getting hit with additional charges for going over their monthly cap. My ISP for example gives me a 100GB / month cap, and some places are as low as 10GB, others like Comcast I think are at 250GB / month. Depending on service plan ofcourse.
 
These are full install size, check the size of the folder on your computer.

Some patches can be quite large, most of the really big ones include large amounts of new content, for example the patch for Company of Heroes is a few Gb large because it contains all the expansion content.

A few Gb isn't very large now a days anyway, on a 1mbit internet connection 2Gb can be had in about 4 and a half hours, with a 50mbit internet connection it can be had in about 5 minutes, depends what you can get in your area and what you're willing to pay for really.
 
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