Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs
do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression.
give no flying fucks about players, who might have really slow connections.
And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”
The downside of the compression is the install can take way longer than the download. But if you’re on a slower connection the smaller download would be a big benefit.
I wouldn’t really say that. The kind of extreme compression Fitgirl does comes with the tradeoff of really long decompression times. Depending on which games, nearly 45 minutes (with a 7800x3D)
Some games lack compression but I would not want those long install times by default, if you have a speedy internet connection they usually take longer to install than to download. Don’t get me wrong, for people with really slow internet those repacks are a godsend but they are not “better” on every aspect.
More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.
Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn’t by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I’m being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.
It will also use ALL your bandwidth by default. I can’t even watch a yt video or anything while doing a steam download unless I limit the bandwidth in settings.
What kind of router do you have? If it has any kind of “smart queue” or “smart qos” you could try enabling that and it will de-prioritize steam’s packets (as needed) so that web browsing and voip still work.
Awesome thank you for the tip. I’m not too well versed in networking so I never really dig around in my router settings. I’m just using the Modem/router supplied by the ISP right now and it doesn’t look like it has anything like that from a quick look through the config page.
Ahh yeah the provided router might not have some of the more advanced features. But suffice to say this isn’t so much a steam problem as it is a “how computer networks work” problem. The way routers work by default tends to penalize “bursty” traffic like loading websites/gaming/voice and prioritize sustained traffic like your download, so it’s nice that valve provide the option to limit the bandwidth. I’m on satellite internet right now waiting for verizon to finish their fiber install and I can’t even use that reliably because my bandwidth changes constantly D=
It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.
It’s basic math for these executives, the cost of bandwidth is magnitudes less than than the cost to pay someone to reduce it. They do not care about the cost to gamers.
do an extremely bad job at basic tasks like compression
I’ve installed one game from FitGirl so far. It took three hours to unpack while hammering all the cpu cores, failed, and required another three-hour go to install properly.
So you’re saying that all games should install like this?
You’re meant to check the CRCs before you extract to verify that you actually fully downloaded the file. Otherwise yes, people like myself will mock you online for this trivial anecdote
The EA/Ubisoft/Rockstar servers are so shit and their games so large that it’s actually near impossible to download their games on a slow internet connection, because they would just timeout after 3~4 hours.
Downloading a cracked, compressed FitGirl repack over P2P and just ignoring the crack was unironically the only viable way to legally enjoy the games I had purchased back when I had slow internet.
The repacks are windows .exes, yet even work flawlessly via wine. FitGirl truly GOATed.
A lot of devs stopped giving a flying fuck to disk space and performance a long time ago. “32GB of RAM and 500GB of disk space? Don’t mind if I do!” - for a pixel art 2D platformer
The thing about compression is you have to process it to decompress it. It may be benificial to people with limited bandwidth, or for peer-to-peer sharing, but it’s probably better for most users for someone like Valve to share the uncompressed version. Bandwidth isn’t the issue it used to be.
It also makes progressive updates harder. The best you can do is compress each update individually, not the whole package.
I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.
Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:
to 10 GiB, and it takes 2min to unpack it in a certain machine
to 3 GiB, and it takes 8min to unpack it in a certain machine
FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.
And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)
I don’t know any that take a long time to unpack from developers. They do have to pre-compile shaders, but that’s different. Maybe I just don’t pay enough attention, or maybe it’s just because I don’t play many big budget games.
From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.
Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:
Installation takes 5-12 minutes (depending on your system, mostly on your drive speed – the game has more than 49000 small files, Paradox never learn from their mistakes)
Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn’t taking less important files out of the game, she’s compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs
And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong? …nah.”
The downside of the compression is the install can take way longer than the download. But if you’re on a slower connection the smaller download would be a big benefit.
I wouldn’t really say that. The kind of extreme compression Fitgirl does comes with the tradeoff of really long decompression times. Depending on which games, nearly 45 minutes (with a 7800x3D)
Some games lack compression but I would not want those long install times by default, if you have a speedy internet connection they usually take longer to install than to download. Don’t get me wrong, for people with really slow internet those repacks are a godsend but they are not “better” on every aspect.
Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.
Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn’t want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.
More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.
I hope you aren’t literally still using an actual HDD.
Yeah I think it ends up waiting for slower storage if your cpu or HDD are too slow. I experience that with slower sdcards on the Deck.
But on a decent NVMe with a balanced CPU the download and disk are full bore and the CPU usage goes really high.
Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn’t by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I’m being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.
Is this why steam is so insanely slow to download games.
It will also use ALL your bandwidth by default. I can’t even watch a yt video or anything while doing a steam download unless I limit the bandwidth in settings.
What kind of router do you have? If it has any kind of “smart queue” or “smart qos” you could try enabling that and it will de-prioritize steam’s packets (as needed) so that web browsing and voip still work.
Awesome thank you for the tip. I’m not too well versed in networking so I never really dig around in my router settings. I’m just using the Modem/router supplied by the ISP right now and it doesn’t look like it has anything like that from a quick look through the config page.
Ahh yeah the provided router might not have some of the more advanced features. But suffice to say this isn’t so much a steam problem as it is a “how computer networks work” problem. The way routers work by default tends to penalize “bursty” traffic like loading websites/gaming/voice and prioritize sustained traffic like your download, so it’s nice that valve provide the option to limit the bandwidth. I’m on satellite internet right now waiting for verizon to finish their fiber install and I can’t even use that reliably because my bandwidth changes constantly D=
It’s more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.
It’s basic math for these executives, the cost of bandwidth is magnitudes less than than the cost to pay someone to reduce it. They do not care about the cost to gamers.
This implies fitgirl is doing it properly. Which it’s trade off faster download longer install times or vice versa.
Decompression during install is generally less of a bottleneck than network bandwidth, so fitgirl is doing it properly.
No it’s making a choice. Faster decompress times. Considering a lot of their customers have fast speeds it doesn’t really matter.
Bingo. And this means they’re effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn’t choose decided to pirate it.
I’m curious, are there countries where fast internet is way too expensive but video games are priced well?
Edit: I mean priced well on launch, btw, not on sale
I’ve installed one game from FitGirl so far. It took three hours to unpack while hammering all the cpu cores, failed, and required another three-hour go to install properly.
So you’re saying that all games should install like this?
You’re meant to check the CRCs before you extract to verify that you actually fully downloaded the file. Otherwise yes, people like myself will mock you online for this trivial anecdote
The EA/Ubisoft/Rockstar servers are so shit and their games so large that it’s actually near impossible to download their games on a slow internet connection, because they would just timeout after 3~4 hours.
Downloading a cracked, compressed FitGirl repack over P2P and just ignoring the crack was unironically the only viable way to legally enjoy the games I had purchased back when I had slow internet.
The repacks are windows .exes, yet even work flawlessly via wine. FitGirl truly GOATed.
A lot of devs stopped giving a flying fuck to disk space and performance a long time ago. “32GB of RAM and 500GB of disk space? Don’t mind if I do!” - for a pixel art 2D platformer
It’s so infuriating I’ve either got 3 brand new games or 30 older games installed on to my device.
Even mobile gaming is getting out of hand
The thing about compression is you have to process it to decompress it. It may be benificial to people with limited bandwidth, or for peer-to-peer sharing, but it’s probably better for most users for someone like Valve to share the uncompressed version. Bandwidth isn’t the issue it used to be.
It also makes progressive updates harder. The best you can do is compress each update individually, not the whole package.
I’m aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there’s some balance to be had. However, I don’t see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.
Here’s a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:
FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground… but they don’t. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.
And it isn’t just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I’m looking at you.)
Tagging @[email protected], as it addresses what they said too.
I don’t know any that take a long time to unpack from developers. They do have to pre-compile shaders, but that’s different. Maybe I just don’t pay enough attention, or maybe it’s just because I don’t play many big budget games.
From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don’t think it’s just the Linux version.
Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl’s site, found EU5 instead, and she’s complaining about the exact same thing:
I did play EU5 (and 4 ages ago) and didn’t notice the issue. I guess I just don’t pay attention to it.
I did because my older computer was a potato, so it was kind of obvious the game took a bit too long to install.