6

Downloading Warhammer: Vermintide II, I noticed how the percentages as displayed in 3 different places have 3 different values:

Download bar on the Downloads tab of the Steam client
Download bar on the Downloads tab of the Steam client (click for original size)
Download bar at the bottom of the Steam client
Download bar at the bottom of the Steam client
Download bar and percentage as displayed in the Library tab
Download bar and percentage as displayed in the Library tab

The first two might be hard to distinguish, but the first image says 53%, whereas the bar in the second image has evidently not passed the middle.
The third image reads 67%, and this seems equal to what the loading bar around the game icon depicts.

I can imagine some of these values have to do with the difference between the files that need to be downloaded and the game files which need to be downloaded and decompressed, but then I'd expect these values to be the other way around (why would the Downloads tab show more of the processes required before being able to play the game, and the Library tab only show the percentage downloaded?).
An other consideration is that one of these values shows some of the accompanying DLC, whereas other do not, but why would that be the case?

Does anyone know what these values actually represent?

Improve this question
1
  • 3
    Only valve knows for sure, but the one on the downloads page got additional tracking added more recently, so it includes data allocation, download, unpack and install progress. I'm pretty sure the percentage in the library is only network traffic, because you get the same bar when uploading cloud saves and such. Similar question here: gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/204058/…
    – Cpt.Whale
    Jan 18 at 21:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Steam uses two metrics to measure download, the download size from the internet and the installation on disk. You can see that in this part of your screenshot.

enter image description here

The download for the game is 58.8GB, but the final size on disk is 83.2GB after it is de-compressed.

The value you see on the library page, 67%, is measuring the completeness of the download 40.1GB/58.8GB is 68%, so I assume this screenshot was taken a few seconds after the downloads page one.

The value you see in the downloads page, 53%, is measuring the total installation which at 44.8GB/83.2GB is 53%. I believe that once the download is finished the words "Downloading" switch to "Installing" or something along those lines until the decompression is finished.

I can only speculate on why they differ, but my best guess is that the value shown in the library was never updated to reflect the new metrics added to the downloads page not too long ago (I can't find an exact date, but it was within the last few years). Before this, Steam only showed the download and just said "Installing" with no progress until the game finished decompressing.

Improve this answer
2
  • Tangentially, these two values also hardly ever differ in terms of actual time until the game is ready. Unless you have very fast internet, or slow disk or cpu, the installation will usually keep up with the download fairly well.
    – clbx
    Jan 20 at 20:40
  • Now the only metric that needs explanation is the third one, indicated by the bottom bar, but this explains the two most important ones.
    – Joachim
    Jan 21 at 12:31

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .