Steam has added a net bandwith limiter to the "downloads" tab under "settings, and it's about damn time!

I remember the Max Payne 3 30 gig pre-load that prettymuch shut my internet down for the day since it couldn't do anything while Steam was DLing.

Also, gone are they days, hopefully, where a streaming video starts stuttering out on me only to find that Steam was downloading some random updates in the background.

It's a feature i've been asking for for a long time and i'm glad it's finally built in.

Well it's about god damn time!

Took them way to long to add a simple feature, that should be on such an bandwidth consuming app from when Steam became a actual store.

It's been an amazingly long time for them to add such a simple feature. Hopefully it's something you can set for Steam overall rather than on an on-download basis.

Finally... Now I can watch Netflix and Youtube while waiting for steam to finish a download.

@rorie: How do you mean "overall"? as far as i know you set the limit in the Downloads tab and it limits all incoming downloads on Steam. There doesn't seem to be a per-download option if that's what you're saying.

I assume I can set it so that it doesn't download anything? There's been times where I've not been able to download things (using phone for internet connection with limited bandwidth) but still wanted to be connected to steam and having to manually set each game to not update isn't fun.

This is a feature that never even crossed my mind. My internet has always been good enough to allow HD streaming video while downloading things and I don't have a monthly data cap. I guess I'm just lucky to live in an area of the US that actually has great internet service

Holy shit it's about time. You know what else they should do? Add an option to shut down your PC automatically once all active downloads have finished. It's been lacking that for ages too.

I want them to add a "shut down Steam when exiting all things that run thru it" option.

I'd like to see an unlimiting feature which lets me download faster than 2MB/s. #fastinternetproblems

That's your end not Steam. I get speeds of 11MB/s when I'm on Uni internet.

Finally! Yeah, I've wanted this feature for a while as well since I live in a house full of people who use the internet very often and I'm usually forced to download overnight or while at school.

I want a queuing system. Download this first. Then that. Then this. Then turn off my system.

Steam?

Is it automatic or is it something we have to set? It would be nice if it worked like bit torrent where you can just leave it running in the background and if it sees you are trying to use bandwidth for something else on your PC it throttles it down to zero. Then when it sees you are just idling it cranks it back up to all it can.

As much as I love Steam it really bothers me how long it takes to get these kinds of obvious QOL features added to the thing. Valves whole let their workers do what they want thing and the long time between these kind of updates makes me feel sometimes like the Steam program/service never has anyone working on trying to make it better or so few people that it takes forever to add anything.

Yeah, gonna echo the sentiment. Back when I was on campus internet with 100 down/30 up I downloaded GTA IV in something ridiculous like 16 minutes.

no baby as fast as I can download the better. download baby download.

I'm on cable, which means my bandwidth varies wildly depending on how many folks in my complex are using the internet, but I've also gotten up to 11 or 12 MB/s on Steam. It's amazing when you can pull down a game from the internet faster than you could read it off a DVD.

I'm lucky enough not to need to limit my downloads these days, but I was hitting my cap all the time in college when I shared a connection with two other heavy internet users. It's definitely a nice feature for those who need it.

@ravenlight: you need to buy a better internet!

I'd still like to be able to schedule when Steam can download and when it can't, so people with bandwidth caps can schedule it to their off-peak times. Honestly they should just copy uTorrent scheduling system.

@chavtheworld:@ajamafalous: @scrawnto:

I get 4MB/s down through Blizzard's downloaders. Any suggestions on how to get the same from Steam?

Where are you situated? I think Blizzard does some P2P stuff in their downloader so maybe that affects it?

Phoenix. I have a Cox business line which doesn't get throttled AFAIK. Which is weird that I get less juice than expected from Steam.

@ravenlight: I dunno about suggestions. My PC is hooked up to my modem/router by ethernet, but I can't say for sure if that has anything to do with anything, since WiFi can support greater than 100 mbps connections if your signal is good.

I used to get 4.5mb/s from steam and 5mb/s from origin before I upgraded my connection, no I dunno what I get from Origin but I get a good 8.5mb/s from Steam if my router isn't being a shit.

This helps in no way but eh.

What download location is Steam set to grab stuff from? Maybe that's it? It's the only other variable I can think of that hasn't already been mentioned.

I was thinking the same thing and messed around with that just now. I get slightly higher (~50KB/s) speeds from Los Angeles than I do from Phoenix. Checked the connection speed setting, too. No difference between the 2Mbps and 10Mbps settings.

It's a mystery but not a huge problem since I still download stuff pretty fast.