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So, i have an X game that occupies like 20Gb, then, a patch comes out, but steam instead of just download and installing the patch, downloads the patch and it seems that copy the entire .exe file then patches it, and then copy it again.

I want to do this to be allowed to patch a game when i dont have enough free space to make the copy of the entire game.

It would be good to have an option to not backup on patch(maybe it's what steam is doing).

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    Steam only downloads and updates what the game creators tell them to update, so If the game is poorly formatted by the creators, and everything is only contained in one or two files, then steam has to download that one file that changed in its entirety since saving part of a file then combining parts of a file is a complicated and usually faulty process.
    – Judge2020
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 22:45
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    But it doesnt download ALL the file, it just download the patch and COPY my game enitrely :P
    – Gaunt
    Commented Mar 5, 2016 at 22:52
  • What game is it?
    – SevenSidedDie
    Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 1:44
  • Is path of exile.
    – Gaunt
    Commented Nov 30, 2016 at 13:23
  • you cannot avoid the double sizing effect, but you can bypass the disk space issues by creating symlinks (shortcuts). e.g. you may cut-paste the downloading folder to a separate disk and place its shortcut in place of the original folder under steam library
    – xenodevil
    Commented Jul 18, 2017 at 14:47

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I've not seen this happen myself. (I've had several games installed, each larger than the total free space on the disk, and they were patched without issues. If this does happen for some game, it's likely specific to that game, or maybe to that specific patch. The patching process is a "black box" to the user, there's not really anything you can do to affect what it's doing.

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  • yes, after some testing, it's something like this: steam patches his OWN WAY, so, if the game is a LARGE .exe file steam will copy that entire .exe file that will change and then do the patch and then copy it again.
    – Gaunt
    Commented Nov 29, 2016 at 16:36

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