How do I continue downloading a game in Steam while playing?
I have many games on Steam and many more I will buy, but I have a problem and I hope you can point me a solution.
When I download a game, is it possible to launch and play a single player game under Steam and continue downloading others games in the meanwhile?
Steam stops my download as soon as I launch any game, and I am looking for a way to prevent this.
We really should be able to configure this on a per-game basis. I like to play offline because I can leave other things downloading in the meantime.
I filed a support ticket asking Valve to at least not pause downloads when they *know* the game you're launching does not support multiplayer (they obviously can't for non-Steam games or games which have both singleplayer and multiplayer). That must've been two years ago or so... ;)
Your 100 rep bounty has paid dividends, great question, @Drake!
I'm playing a single player game. That's no reason for Steam to pause downloads.
Global option
You can now allow downloads during any gameplay from the downloads settings:
Per game option
You can now tell Steam to continue downloading updates/games while playing games from your games' properties. Note that this setting is not available for non-steam games, which will always use the global setting.
I presume that it's only possible to do this on a game by game basis and not make it the default for all games?
@Thunderforge the latest beta patch added a global option
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Content dated before 6/26/2020 9:53 AM
ChrisF 10 years ago
I assume that Steam thinks you want to play online and downloading will hurt your ping.