As the coronavirus continues forcing people to stay home, Steam is making shrewd efforts to save bandwidth for their customers. With everyone stuck in social isolation during the ongoing pandemic, people are using the internet more and more, either for entertainment, communication with friends and family, or working from home - and straining their connections in the process.
As a result of this increase, more companies are taking special actions to help ensure networks aren’t spread too thin. Earlier this month, Netflix announced that it is reducing HD streaming in Europe at the request of the EU, while PlayStation Network is slowing its download speeds across the United States. Earlier today, Xbox Live announced changes to its online services in the wake of a growing userbase as well, and it seems that Steam isn’t too far behind.
Steam unveiled its bandwidth-saving measures on its website yesterday, which it hopes will make things easier for customers in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. These involve spreading system updates further over the course of several days, with games that have been played over the last three days taking priority. In addition, Steam also gives players the option to schedule auto-updates to times when they aren’t in the middle of work, switch off automatic updates for games they aren’t currently playing, and move unplayed games from a hardrive to another storage unit, so they can save disk space without having to go through the trouble of re-downloading titles should they want to play them again in the future.
With many turning to video games as a distraction during the coronavirus epidemic, online gaming services like Steam have seen record user increases in the past month. This has been compounded by multiple free offerings from the likes of Epic Games, as well as Steam itself offering up a whopping 40 free demos from the canceled Game Developers Conference earlier this year.
Factors like these give companies like Steam all the more reason to try and reduce the strain their services have on user bandwidth during a time when more people are on the internet than ever. Luckily, Steam appears to be taking sound steps in this area, providing much flexibility for players who wish to balance their game downloads with other online actions like working or watching movies, something customers can appreciate even when they aren’t in the midst of a worldwide pandemic like the coronavirus.
Source: Steam