Valve has made some adjustments to the way Steam currently deals with game downloads in order to reduce bandwidth usage during the coronavirus outbreak.
“We know a lot of you (like us here at Valve) are stuck at home right now trying to work or attend school remotely,” the company wrote, “Or maybe you’re just playing a bunch of great games on Steam. 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.”
With that in mind, Steam will now prioritise and schedule game auto-updates slightly differently to normal for the foreseeable future.
Effective from today, only games that have been played in the last three days will be updated immediately. As was already the case, updates for less recently played games will be scheduled for local off-peak times, but will now be spread across several more days. Valve notes that updates can still be manually triggered when starting a game or by using the Download Manager, and that it’s “also looking into additional solutions to help on our side.”