heywood on 19/9/2011 at 07:23

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Well, Steam just cost me $30 and a few hours of frustration.

Here's what happened:

I currently rely on a mobile broadband connection here at my Sydney apartment which costs me about $8/GB, so I rely on update settings to control my bandwidth usage. Steam worked as normal until last Thursday. When I woke my computer that morning, it silently started updating DX:HR and apparently continued on after I left for work. This happened even though I had "Do not automatically update this game" checked and hadn't launched the game for a few days. And it wasn't a 32MB update. It downloaded about 3.5GB ($30) before my remaining data balance was exhausted and then crashed, leaving a log and a broken update.

So after reconstructing what happened and throwing some money at my ISP to get my internet back, I launched Steam in offline mode and tried the game. It didn't work; it wasn't "prepared to be run in offline mode". I switched Steam to online and immediately the update started. Tried to pause the update and launch the game, which didn't work. So I let the update proceed till it reached 5% and at that point my network log was saying I had already downloaded 420MB. What the? Extrapolate that to completion and it's 8.4GB! I then check the size of my DX:HR folder and it's only ~1GB. I had lost all the game content on my hard drive.

I'm not sure how Steam applies updates, but any sane update process should download the update file(s) first and then only update the game files after it has downloaded everything. In my case, it seemed to wipe my DX:HR install before the download was complete. Or there's a bug in the integrity checker that decided my whole game was bad.

Fortunately, I purchased a retail copy because of the excessive cost of downloading, not to mention time. The re-install option didn't work, but I was able to uninstall it and then do a full install from DVD again. After that, the update went normally. At least I didn't have to spend another $70 on bandwidth downloading the entire game.

I don't doubt this update was forced on us in order to deliver the ads. I will definitely reconsider whether to keep using Steam. I'm not interested in having an adware service on my machine that gives you settings to control network access and then ignores them.

EvaUnit02 on 19/9/2011 at 16:39

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Easier said than done. Internet is notoriously horse shit in Australia and NZ, especially mobile broadband. The common norms are tiny monthly data caps, expensive monthly subscription fees and sloth-like speeds in comparison to the rest of the Western world.

heywood on 19/9/2011 at 22:19

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ADSL is a reasonably economic choice here for most, but not an option for me due to a wiring issue somewhere in the walls of my building that the strata management company won't find & fix. Cable is ridiculously expensive. I've been spending 1/3 of my time in the UK this year, and when I'm here I typically use only about 5-7GB a month so the most economical choice was mobile broadband.

And expensive internet connection aside, Steam's updater is still bugged.

DDL on 20/9/2011 at 20:35

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Obviously this is a shitty thing for you to suffer, but..I dunno, I'm thinking it's just not the sort of thing that the majority of people would ever encounter. Hell, you say yourself that ADSL is relatively easily available most other places, and with a limit-free (ish) pipeline this would be a non-issue.

My general instinct if I were ever on such an insanely overpriced connection would be to only ever turn it on when I needed it, rather than say, leaving it on and assuming nothing on my computer would go rogue.

Ok, my computer has masses of steam stuff on it, so really I'm supporting your argument, but still: the average desktop nowadays has so many random autoupdate-prone things (like fucking windows, for instance) that incredible caution would seem wise.

..I'm not helping, am I. Sorry.

Having said all that, have you considered writing to the steam peeps and explaining your woes? Christ knows they're drowning in money, and seem to be frequently happy to reimburse people (albeit more often in 'free games' rather than 'actual money', so you're still looking at a steam-based service..but hey; free games?).

Volitions Advocate on 23/9/2011 at 07:22

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I'd have driven to the nearest university / starbucks and slept on a bench while taking advantage of the free wifi.

I still haven't found the advantage in not turning off your computer at night when you go to bed though.

EDIT: re-read your post. I guess you didn't leave it on all night, but all day. I guess my point is still valid.