Steam - more responsive client, faster launching games & free up some space!

MeMeMeMe said:
I'm very dubious about this.
If they are necessary, won't steam redownload them every time if performs a game update?
If they are not necessary and not used, then they cannot affect how long it takes to load a steam game or make the steam client more responsive.

"remove these annoying launch hoops that you have to jump through everytime you play the games, but it'll save gigabytes of space on your PC." - what hoops are those?

Usually the main thing you need to speed up a game loading is remove the startup videos, and those aren't in the folders listed above but in different folders for each game.

Note: the folders mentioned on my PC amount to 25GB, which seems like a lot till you realise my common folder is 1.04 TB, so it's a lot of effort for around 2% saving.

It seems like this 'fix' is either useless or asking for trouble, if those files are actually used.
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The man speaks a wealth of information. Yes it would be nice not to have the game launch the incredibly annoying startup process, but at the same time, on a 1Tb or 2Tb drive, only saving 1% or 2% hardly seems worth it, when in honesty, I could probably free more hard-drive space by deleting games I don't play any more.

Not to mention, next new game, the redist/dx etc will only get downloaded again, and then you have to go back and delete it each time. I would personally rather have those programs up to date, even if that means a long load time every so often :)
 
Well I'll be giving this a try when I get home. Running very short of space on my 250gb SSD. Even if I save just 5gb of space that means another couple of games I can have installed.
 
LOL people think it's risky deleting installers? Really?

It's bad enough that each new game installs a useless new chunk of DX onto your PC when you consider the fact most of us have DX11, which is fully backwards compatible and will run them all. No idea about Steam redownloading through an update though, but either way it's worth it unless you're lazy, it takes a minute to clear them out of every game, and if you have an SSD, 100+ MB of installers with each game is noticeable.

I wasn't saying this is for everyone, but people who aren't lazy are going to want to do this, I have a 1TB HDD and will be doing it with every download and update as funnily enough it takes 5 seconds. :p

The Witcher 2, Batman Arkham City, Dead Rising 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Street Fighter IV. Those are the games that for me, every time I launched them it would come up:

Step 1 of 3: Installing XNA

Step 2 of 3: Installing .Net Framework

Step 3 of 3: Installing DirectX

The best part is, it wasn't, each stage took 2 seconds to get past and would still launch even if I clicked cancel, but simply deleting the folders makes the games launch instantly. If some people can't see the benefit of that, then they deserve to sit waiting each time they launch a game. I'm not being insulting, I'm being honest.
 
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Omaeka said:
LOL people think it's risky deleting installers? Really?

It's bad enough that each new game installs a useless new chunk of DX onto your PC when you consider the fact most of us have DX11, which is fully backwards compatible and will run them all. No idea about Steam redownloading through an update though, but either way it's worth it unless you're lazy, it takes a minute to clear them out of every game, and if you have an SSD, 100+ MB of installers with each game is noticeable.

I wasn't saying this is for everyone, but people who aren't lazy are going to want to do this, I have a 1TB HDD and will be doing it with every download and update as funnily enough it takes 5 seconds. :p
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It's not so much the fact of deleting installers, but the fact you would have to continually delete them on each new game, and for what? Saving a couple of Gb if that.

That is far too much hassle for me to worry about saving a couple Gb of space :)
 
If it's far too much hassle when it takes less than a few seconds, then fair enough, that's down to you personally and is not the general consensus of everybody who owns a PC. I put this on here for the people who want to save space, HDD or SSD, some people will want to free up tons of space, especially as 35 games = 3.5GB, I know people with hundreds of games installed, and some games like GTA IV can carry over 350MB of installers, why would you want that rubbish on your PC? :confused:

Only new titles update, I haven't had an update through Steam for days.

Really though what this ultimately comes down to is Valve be lazy.
 
NealR said:
It's not so much the fact of deleting installers, but the fact you would have to continually delete them on each new game, and for what? Saving a couple of Gb if that.

That is far too much hassle for me to worry about saving a couple Gb of space :)
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Yeah its really hard to select your games folder and type in the search box, select the folders and delete. Takes all of a minute.
 
modo77 said:
Yeah its really hard to select your games folder and type in the search box, select the folders and delete. Takes all of a minute.
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I'm a lazy gamer. No doubt, if I was running out of space on my HDD, then I might consider it, but like I said in a post above, I would probably just delete a game I don't play, and recover more than the space taken by the installers :)
 
Cool, thanks for the heads up on that. Theres certainly a few games I have when I launch them it tries to install the same thing each time.
I'll give this a go tonight :)
 
Westie said:
If it ain't broke don't fix it! Steam works flawless for me so not messing with this carp!
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I agree with this


If you have limited disk space, removing some of the runtime installers might help.
I don't really have any problems with disk space so have always left those installers there as when I re-install windows / steam etc when I run those games for the first time those runtimes install from those directories.
Seems pretty helpful to leave them there for me as it saves downloading them individually.
Also not sure if you have to fix the game cache if it would download those again?

Looking at the LASER thing in linux & personally I wouldn't use it as it seems to overwrite key resource files within steam. (unlike using a theme/skin)

Omaeka said:
Have you noticed that whenever you launch a game from your Library, it comes up with pointless 'Step 1 of 3: Installing DirectX' and other nonsense every single damn time?
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I've had this once but just told steam to fix the game cache which fixed this issue
 
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Thanks for this, I need the space on my SSD.

Its annoying when they dont think of these things. "Well just use up all your space for no reason we dont care."
 
Omaeka said:
It's bad enough that each new game installs a useless new chunk of DX onto your PC when you consider the fact most of us have DX11, which is fully backwards compatible and will run them all.
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Not strictly true, according to RPS:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/03/why-steam-makes-you-install-directx-repeatedly/

This is the relevant bit :

"This is ultimately to our benefit: “The code to check correctly and repair broken installs all exists in the installer and running it is a guarantee that the correct binaries will exist when you run the game and prevents lots of bad cases where a game would fail to launch with an obscure error if a windows install was either missing the correct version or somehow corrupted in the past.”

 Dependencies may also change every time a new version of DirectX is released. On top of this, Microsoft prevents anyone else from distributing standalone DX files themselves, so “the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that’s also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed.”

Edit -

Here's the word from Valve on it, knew I'd read it from them somewhere:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=23759166&postcount=47
 
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Sleepery said:
Not strictly true, according to RPS:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/08/03/why-steam-makes-you-install-directx-repeatedly/

This is the relevant bit :

"This is ultimately to our benefit: “The code to check correctly and repair broken installs all exists in the installer and running it is a guarantee that the correct binaries will exist when you run the game and prevents lots of bad cases where a game would fail to launch with an obscure error if a windows install was either missing the correct version or somehow corrupted in the past.”

 Dependencies may also change every time a new version of DirectX is released. On top of this, Microsoft prevents anyone else from distributing standalone DX files themselves, so “the only way to distribute them is to run the installer, that’s also the only supported method from Microsoft to check that the correct version installed.”

Edit -

Here's the word from Valve on it, knew I'd read it from them somewhere:

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showpost.php?p=23759166&postcount=47
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Ah good to know. :)

Can still get rid of the installers after the first install though, thankfully. :p
 
Omaeka said:
I wasn't saying this is for everyone, but people who aren't lazy are going to want to do this, I have a 1TB HDD and will be doing it with every download and update as funnily enough it takes 5 seconds. :p

The Witcher 2, Batman Arkham City, Dead Rising 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Street Fighter IV. Those are the games that for me, every time I launched them it would come up:

Step 1 of 3: Installing XNA

Step 2 of 3: Installing .Net Framework

Step 3 of 3: Installing DirectX

The best part is, it wasn't, each stage took 2 seconds to get past and would still launch even if I clicked cancel, but simply deleting the folders makes the games launch instantly. If some people can't see the benefit of that, then they deserve to sit waiting each time they launch a game. I'm not being insulting, I'm being honest.
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If that;s happening to you, i can see why it's worthwhile to delete them. I have three of the games you mention, and it doesn't happen to me when I play them, so i suggest something is wrong with your installation.

But if this method cures it, good for you.

Now, see that bit in your post I've bolded? It's not about laziness. In your case, it's about removing an annoyance, which is why it's less hassle for you to do it than not do it. So please don't try to take the high ground and paint those who dont see any value in this method as lazy.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
If that;s happening to you, i can see why it's worthwhile to delete them. I have three of the games you mention, and it doesn't happen to me when I play them, so i suggest something is wrong with your installation.

But if this method cures it, good for you.

Now, see that bit in your post I've bolded? It's not about laziness. In your case, it's about removing an annoyance, which is why it's less hassle for you to do it than not do it. So please don't try to take the high ground and paint those who dont see any value in this method as lazy.
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The Witcher 2 is really bad for it, so many people report the issue with .Net Framework repairing itself to the point it can take 5 minutes every launch, so quite a few people suffer from it with that, and I'm not the only one in the thread with problems with Batman neither. I wasn't trying to paint anyone who doesn't do it as lazy, only the people who suffer the same problems as I and many others have done, hence the final:

The best part is, it wasn't, each stage took 2 seconds to get past and would still launch even if I clicked cancel, but simply deleting the folders makes the games launch instantly. If some people can't see the benefit of that, then they deserve to sit waiting each time they launch a game. I'm not being insulting, I'm being honest.
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If you genuinely have zero issues with Steam running slow, no need for any space and none of your games have the launch issues, then this fix wasn't aimed at you and there wasn't really any need to state that. :p

People with SSDs are going to find this absolutely invaluable. GTA IV being the best example, that game is dead now as far as any future updates go, yet there is 350MB of useless installers sitting in it's folder, I have no idea how anyone would want that there but fair enough pal. :)

UPDATE:

** Street Fighter x Tekken Updated today with the new DLC characters (Major Update) and the installers are still gone! **
 
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