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Steam defines itself as 'the ultimate entertainment platform.' Its software, available for PC, Mac, and mobile devices, allows people to 'play, connect, [and] create.' Its gaming library has more than 2,000 titles and it has approximately 40 million users. If you're one of those 40 million, you know what a pain it can be to wait for a game to update or for a new one to download -- it's not the speediest process.
Here's how to make the wait time a little less painful:
Open the Steam settings page. This can be accessed by right-clicking the Steam icon in the system tray and selecting Settings from the menu that appears.
In the Settings window, there will be many tabs full of all sorts of options and settings that you can play with. The settings we're interested in are under the Downloads + Cloud tab.
Two of the settings here can help increase your download speed. First, make sure the drop-down labeled 'Approximate speed of your Internet connection' is properly set to, well, the approximate speed of your Internet connection.
Second, play around with the Download region drop-down settings. Your best bet is going to be the closest location to you, but factors like the internet connection between you and that location or volume of traffic to that server may tip the scale in the favor of a server further away.
Adjusting these settings will require you to restart your Steam client before the changes come into effect. Hopefully you'll notice faster download speeds after the restart. If there's no change -- or worse, your connection seems slower -- play around more with the download region setting until you find a reliable, low-traffic server.
(Via Wonder How To)
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Just bought a ton of new Steam games? Maybe you're swapping to a new computer and (for whatever reason) need to re-download your collection? Valve just made it a lot easier to batch-install multiple games.
Spotted by Steam Database, a recent Steam update now lets you right-click and install multiple games at the same time instead of going through the install dialogue for each game individually. All you have to do is select the games you want to install in your library—Shift + mouse click or Control + mouse click depending on how much granularity you need—and then right-click one of the highlighted games and hit Install.
Steam Download Game With Little Gigabyte Download
The familiar Steam game installation window will pop up, except instead of a single game it will show you all the ones you've selected and how much cumulative space they'll take up on your drive. If you have second thoughts (or selected a game by accident) you can toggle it right from that dialogue screen.
It's a small change, especially compared to the recent UI overhaul and the extraordinary pace at which Valve has put out Steam updates recently, but it's probably the feature I'll use the most. I've got about 700GB free on this hard drive—I might as well fill it up. (And eventually wind up using the newfangled ability to hide games from your Steam library, no doubt.)