I was wondering…what’s the deal with Steam when you download a new game (just released)? I pre-ordered Total War Napoleon and I got a pop up message an hour and a half ago that the game was ready to download and play. Excellent! So, I hit the button to install the game and watched as the game was downloaded. Took about 10 minutes. Great! Then I hit ‘play’ and a new box opened up informing me that the game would be ready to play in…and hour and a half? WTF? The game is installed, I checked…so, what is the delay for? What is it having to do at this point?
Just curious if anyone knows. I think this is the first time I’ve bought a game on Steam that was just released. Most of the other games I’ve bought have been out for some time (or I’ve bought DLC’s for existing games).
In an hour and a half is probably the official release, and they’re not allowed to let you play it before then. However, by letting you download it earlier, it allows them to lighten the load on their servers.
Yeah, I’ve seen that before. I’ve just never seen one that basically told me the game would be ready in an hour and a half to play (and if I want to launch the game when it’s ready). It was just unusual, since the download and install portion was relatively quick. It’s down to like 20 minutes now, so I’m just letting it alone to see what happens.
Well, it’s out in theory anyway. I’m still waiting. I’m not going to get too excited about this one, as from the reviews it seems more on par with the Alexander expansion for Rome than, say, the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II. Still, the graphic and AI have supposedly been improved, and the time scale has been dropped from a turn equaling 6 months to a turn equaling a week.
(if it really sucks I’m enjoying the King Arthur Role Playing Wargame, in any case, so I’m covered at least until the new Dragon Age expansion comes out)
They did the same thing with Half Life 2 and the expansions - you could download modules up to a month prior to the official release, to reduce the release-day server load.
Prior to release, the game executables are encrypted. If you’re sitting there waiting for the very minute, you may need to restart the Steam app once it rolls over to force it to update release status and decrypt it for you.
I’m not going to get too excited about this one, as from the reviews it seems more on par with the Alexander expansion for Rome than, say, the Kingdoms expansion for Medieval II. Still, the graphic and AI have supposedly been improved, and the time scale has been dropped from a turn equaling 6 months to a turn equaling a week.