Giant file sizes. Great way to hurt piracy if you think about it. The big publishers surely have...
Insane disc space required by AAA games
- Thread starter secretkeeper12
- Start date
I'm lucky I guess, I don't have bandwidth or hard drive space issues. So none of this really applies to me. Sucks for sure for those who buy digital though and don't have the speed to back it up (or have usage limits). Don't have much to say except that not all services will cater to everyone, which is a hard fact of life at the moment.
Oh no no, I wasn't suggesting we choose what levels of what we'd like to install but I think we should be able to not install massive uncompressed multi-lingual audio- Especially in games that do not even let you pick it.Bad Jim said:
It'd drop the size of the game to a fraction.
My internet speed isn't as fast as it was before I got a different modem to replace a faulty one (which I need to get replaced again now by the way) and it does take a quite a bit of time to download larger games of off PSN... like DC Universe Online took like 8 hours to download.. i don't have any data cap, it's unlimited ,but i only have like 20 MBS of speed.. Though it's usually much slower thanks to my messed up modem now.. i use to have faster speeds at like 25MBS to 30MBS.. either way.. i hate that the downloads for games are so large.. it's part of the many reason I usually get games on disc instead of as a download.. I have a PS3 by the way, i can't imagine trying to download PS4 games considering how large their files are like 35 and 40 GBs.. it would take days to download a game .. and that sucks
Then these faceless and apparently "a lot of" others are also saying stuff that amounts to the stupidest anti-piracy measure I've heard.Snotnarok said:
Either way, it's stupid.Snotnarok said:
Why did you repeated what I had already said?Snotnarok said:
Besides, some people who'd legally purchase the game would also have problems with bandwith plans. Some of them might not be able to even buy a physical copy. As I also said, DD users would be equally affected.
Piracy has shown that it doesn't largely care about volume. The file sharing technologies has been developing in several prominent directions, volume is one of them - being able to download data in bulk is one of the core things they strive for.
Blowing up the volume is simply a retarded measure that has shown to not affect piracy much a decade ago when internet access and storage would largely be way smaller than today. And file sharing has not only been able to fit the extra volume, it welcomed it and it made it even easier to distribute. Showing that, no, volume is not a real obstacle. Again, aside from some people constrained by their ISP. But targeting them is akin to offering a drawing of a fluffy pony on the box - some people really like fluffy ponies and would be made to buy the game if they got a one, instead of pirate it. This would also be a way of trying to prevent piracy - targeting fluffy pony drawing lovers. I'd also call it stupid. It might even be less stupid than inflating the volume as it doesn't affect negatively the legitimate customers. Well, unless you count being deprived of a fluffy pony drawing as negative, of course.
This brings up a question I was wondering about...with the 500GB HDD in the PS4/X1 and mandatory installs (because really, fuck streaming anything exclusively from a Blu-ray drive), plus patches and season pass DLC and shit, is there only like 5 games at a time you can "hot swap" before having to delete one in order to play a different one?
Anyway, I thank the gods that I don't have a cap, but I do have 3 m/bs DSL with a raw download of like 250 kb/s at the best of times. I have a 2 TB HDD and had damn near filled it with steam, and only had a 250GB HDD to backup my Steamapps folder when I formatted my drive and bit the bullet on Windows 8.1. Titanfall, Wolfenstein, and the usual suspects took forever, and Steam likes to devour all of the bandwidth worse than a torrent client and makes Netflix and stuff impossible for others in the house. Anyway I think it took a little over 2 weeks to get my Steam library back to the state it was in before.
I'm afraid the sizes are probably only going to get larger, considering that we're seeing the actual "ultra" textures for some games coming as an additional multi-GB download already. Blame everything having to be open world these days (every single Ubisoft game, Mordor, fucking Zelda), QC derps like uncompressed audio for all the languages, and the nature of megatexturing/iD5 (oh what The Evil Within could have been were that not forced upon a Japanese developer, I wonder if Bethesda even had Carmack's notes and instructions translated properly)
Anyway, I thank the gods that I don't have a cap, but I do have 3 m/bs DSL with a raw download of like 250 kb/s at the best of times. I have a 2 TB HDD and had damn near filled it with steam, and only had a 250GB HDD to backup my Steamapps folder when I formatted my drive and bit the bullet on Windows 8.1. Titanfall, Wolfenstein, and the usual suspects took forever, and Steam likes to devour all of the bandwidth worse than a torrent client and makes Netflix and stuff impossible for others in the house. Anyway I think it took a little over 2 weeks to get my Steam library back to the state it was in before.
I'm afraid the sizes are probably only going to get larger, considering that we're seeing the actual "ultra" textures for some games coming as an additional multi-GB download already. Blame everything having to be open world these days (every single Ubisoft game, Mordor, fucking Zelda), QC derps like uncompressed audio for all the languages, and the nature of megatexturing/iD5 (oh what The Evil Within could have been were that not forced upon a Japanese developer, I wonder if Bethesda even had Carmack's notes and instructions translated properly)
*Old man voice*
I remember the days when computer games came on a 1.44 MB floppy.
And then, to my surprise, the sequel came out... On FOUR 1.44 MB floppies.
Poppycock! I had to go out and buy a 20 MB hard drive, just to keep up with the immense size!
I remember the days when computer games came on a 1.44 MB floppy.
And then, to my surprise, the sequel came out... On FOUR 1.44 MB floppies.
Poppycock! I had to go out and buy a 20 MB hard drive, just to keep up with the immense size!
Same here, actually one month I decided to download all my steam games and back them up on my NAS.RhombusHatesYou said:On a 100Mb/s fibre optic connection? None.
I ran out of space on my 2TB HDD before Steam ran out of games, granted I just started installing on the other 2 HDD's but still 2TB and I had more to go damn......
I don't normally look at game sizes anymore, as you can probably tell their irrelevant to me. Heck I don't even look at specs, just buy a game, set to max and away I go.
Also this. As technology grows, so does the drive space and software size grow to match it. Fact of tech or something like that.Jiggle Counter said:
That post only ended up creating more questions for me...Imperioratorex Caprae said:
Technology evolves everyday, usually between 6 months to 2 years before hard drives and other media double in size.
It got me wondering, with internet speeds varying from country to country, how fast does the technology of internet speed evolve? Considering we've added the whole digital download thingy.
It's not a set piece like, yay our games come on floppy disks, now on CDs, now on DVDs, now on dual layered DVDs, installing massive games has never been simpler.
I mean, someday there'll be massive, MASSIVE digital download games, and I won't be looking forward to downloading them on my Australian internet.
It'll be like, "Terrific, I just bought a game, now I have to leave my computer on for 2 days straight"
Its a question of infrastructure rather than tech at this point. Til the fiber, or cable (better if its fiber) is laid down to more areas, the internet speeds get throttled by older tech. Example: Where I grew up they were still using two-wire copper phone lines which back in my day also throttled your dial-up speeds. It wasn't until AT&T replaced the phone lines in my hometown (which took forever) that we got anything above 14.4kbps (no cable modems, no DSL, not even 28.8kbps). We got caught up to cable speeds around 2003-2004 or so but even now you can find neighborhoods that don't have anything beyond shitty DSL support.Jiggle Counter said:
When I were a lad, all we had were cassette tapes. You waited almost as long for some games to load then as you do waiting for them to download now. Unless you're the OP. Even tapes didn't take that long. Unless you had a C64 which was slow as fuck. It was also the only computer in history where the cassette deck loaded things faster than the disk drive (5.25" floppies!) could. And all this were fields...Jiggle Counter said:
Steam does have an amount of bandwidth control built into it. Just let me put a star hereDrunkOnEstus said:
!!!STAR!!!
There we go. The bandwidth control is, in fact, rather terrible. There is lack of fine-grained control[footnote]to an extent. You used to be able to choose from only powers of 2, e.g., 64 KB/s, 128 KB/s, 256 KB/s, 512 KB/s, etc and nothing in between. Recently it seems to have changed, now it's slightly better as you have 128 KB/s, 192 KB/s, 256 KB/s but I don't really consider this a big improvement.[/footnote]. There is also how the speed limit is enforced - see, normally you'd expect that if you set your limit to X it won't go over X and it would maintain the speed at just about X. Steam does only the former. As in, if you reach your max speed, the downloading stops and resumes a bit afterwards.
It's this. Repeated over and over again. The downloading starts off, builds up speed, reaches the maximum, dies, starts off, builds up speed, etc. It's literally repeating all the time.
Which makes downloading actually slower on average than what you'd expect as the average speed is not what you set it to, it's likely about 2/3 or so (depends on your connection and what setting you choose, though).
It's better than nothing, at least. It does mean one machine on the network doesn't gobble up all the bandwidth.
Haha, I remember the tapes, my dad talked about them. He said there were times where you had to rewind the tape and start again if the software didn't load properly. Sounds god damn painful. But then again, I'm sure you had much better patience than the people of today.srm79 said:
Most of that space is for textures. It's hard to imagine but you'd be surprised by how big a texture file can get, especially if they're uncompressed. Unfortunately for you, this trend is never going anywhere as long as the hardware keeps evolving and getting better.
My suggestion would be to buy physical until you are able to upgrade your connection. Then you're only limited by the speed that your disk drive reads, which is usually faster than most internet speeds.
My suggestion would be to buy physical until you are able to upgrade your connection. Then you're only limited by the speed that your disk drive reads, which is usually faster than most internet speeds.
I wish digital games just made language options, well...optional to download. I can't even think of a time where I actually used a language in a game that wasn't the default or my own language. It would have made Titanfall MUCH more bearable to download. And Final Fantasy XIII.
On the steam client top leftDrunkOnEstus said:
Steam>Settings>Downloads
Change it from No limit to something appropriate when others are in the house
or most routers come with some sort of bandwidth allocation control if you want to mess with it's settings for everyone in the house.
If it didn't load, the culprit was usually a kink in the tape where the "Play" button had been left pressed when the tape stopped. It would basically bugger the last line of code and you'd get a variation on the dreaded Read Error A message (That was on the Amstrad CPC464, although the Sinclair Spectrum and the C64 had virtually identical error codes because everything was based on BASIC).Jiggle Counter said:
The cure was to unspool the tape, place the crumpled section between a pair of tea towels and iron it. Usually this didn't work. On the other hand, most games were between £1.99 and £3.99. A "full price" game was £10, but those were rare, and at first were usually compilations. Ocean Software's They Sold A Million collection was the first one I ever had. It had Beach Head, SabreWulf, Jet Set Willy and something else I can't remember in it. The entire "file size" (there weren't really files then though) equivalent would be smaller than the "readme.doc" you find buried away in the root folder of most PC games now. And we didn't have "cheat codes". Oh, no. We had the "multipurpose interface mark II" or the Multiface2 as it was marketed. You want infinite lives? Sure. Just use the Multiface to stop the game, break into the code and rewrite the assembly code that will switch off the counter then. Easy, right?
We were a geeky minority back then. But at least we all knew how to code.
Noo get off ma lawn!
The biggest game i have downloaded has to be titan fall when it was free on origin for about a month, it took me only 25 minutes to download on my 100mbps connection. The only reason that game needed that much space was because of the uncompressed audio. And my 1TB hdd has plenty of space for more games just like it.