[Bug] Patch takes forever to actually patch

11 Sep, '21
seth Merged

My friends and I noticed that after downloading the patch today that the install process was odd. Almost no disk usage for first 10 minutes while the expected time to completion shot up to 2+ years.

Now its chugging along at 19 mb/s. Seems odd for a 76mb patch to need another 20 min after the dl

27 Sep, '21
Neal Merged

First, I installed the game on the local drive R, and then reinstalled it on the C drive. I noticed that when downloading updates, the old installation path is used, and then it is copied to the new directory. Perhaps this is a Steam problem, or perhaps not. I also noticed that both installation paths are present in the Windows Registry

02 Oct, '21
Neal Merged

This could happen because the first time I uninstalled the game simply by manually deleting the folder.

09 Oct, '21
John Merged

It is mostly done already after ~10 (maybe 35 cuz it was prob working while i was watching anime) mins so not a huge deal but it downloaded a 147 mb update to do a 36.1 gb patch and its running slow. around 90-150 MB/s disk usage. And now its verifying the files when that finished, great.

I *thought* i clicked to install on my SSD C drive but it anded up installing the Beta on my HDD so after openingit once this morning i had steam move the install file. Guessing this is reinstalling the whole game on the wrong HD. i know kniow how to check what its doing, if it was too slow i was gonna click to verify my files but im waiting it out.
Its done and i dont see it on the HDD so w/e.

If this was the inteented update and its just a slow patching process for a small file my bad. The pic shows 17 hours in that snip but i didnt even notice it showing such a bad estimate, it was showing ~3 mins usually, took 15-45 mins.

09 Oct, '21
SnS Merged

Same problem here 150Mb of download and patching process time more than 10 min. Move to 5%-12% is the slow process

09 Oct, '21
Windy Merged

Update through steam doesn't work as should. work around: uninstall and install again. Entire process goes 20x faster.

10 Oct, '21
Guest Merged

Steam diff-pathes 40gb asset archive (which is somewhat weird because there are 17 pak files. Are all of them changed?). This takes a lot of time and disk bandwidth.

10 Oct, '21
LordDrol Merged

Downloaded updates through steam take 15-30 min to “patch.” Every. Time. Regardless of download size.
I don’t have this problem with any other game. It’s literally just writing to the disk

10 Oct, '21
Iulian Merged

The update is not working right now for me... I can't play the game because of 25 MBS of updates. It mentions something about disk write error... I have to reinstall I guess.
Resolved the problem by delleting :appmanifest_1671080.acf from D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps

10 Oct, '21
Chrissy Admin Merged

"[Bug]? Download patch" (suggested by LordDrol on 2021-10-10), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

12 Oct, '21
Terry Merged

My sons computer took over an hour to actually patch the game, so we missed an hour of game play at the end of the weekend which was sad. It downloaded it in a few seconds, but the actual patching process was horribly slow. Computer was essentially idle too, CPU/HDD/RAM were all basically doing nothing, so no idea what the patching process was actually doing.

13 Oct, '21
MoD256 Merged

I also think the patch/update times are a little bit long, but I guess this are high efficient compressed incremental updates, what would explain the little download sizes, but on the other side it needs much more time for uncompressing/merging/replacing the patches...

Hard to say what's the better way. For one with volume-based internet connection it's the best what can happen, but for flatrate/unlimted users the download could be bigger, therefore the patch time could be faster.....

So it would be rational to find an compromise, make the downloads so big that the patch speed is bearable, but not so tall that we everytime must download half of the game again.

To find the best compromise can be harder than we think, because we don't know how much there is really patched... but I think it would make sense to find a way to shorten the patch time on "normal" hard disks to 5-15 minutes on a average-good gaming pc. 30-90 minutes are ways to long.

23 Oct, '21
Derpy1 Merged

The game requires to redownload and verify the entire game every update. Everytime I see the update, like the recent one, it said 50 something MB but really it was 20gigs. This is problematic because that eats up so much time that me and my friends could be playing.

23 Oct, '21
Derpy1 Merged

The game requires to redownload and verify the entire game every update. Everytime I see the update, like the recent one, it said 50 something MB but really it was 20gigs. This is problematic because that eats up so much time that me and my friends could be playing.

09 Nov, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin Merged

"update take long time on steam" (suggested by rayxon17 on 2021-11-08), including upvotes (1) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

04 Dec, '21
Nathan Merged

Why does it take an hour to update?
This has been an issue since early beta!

05 Dec, '21
Kevin Merged

If you don't have enough disk space left, steam will fail to update the game and you have to redownload it again.
This is also for 3 mb patches, steam will show "not enough disk space".

06 Dec, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin Merged

Hey! This isn't something we can fix, we've optimised it to the best of our ability, and it's now your internet and Steam's side to help you get it faster. It also depends on how many people are downloading at the same time! Thanks!

07 Dec, '21
Big Gay Merged

every update or patch etc i have to reinstall the game or patch the 48 gigs every time? very fun game

07 Dec, '21
Snoochy42 Merged

For whatever reason whenever I download the updates my game does a full file verification and steam stalls out for about 10-30 minutes. IF it resumes normal operations, if spikes up and down constantly and takes about 4 hours to verify the files. Sometimes it takes more than 12 hours. but in general Steam tries to tell me it will take "> 1 year" to verify my files. The Game itself however downloads and installs in about 12 minutes. Please do not make File Validations a forced requirement every single patch if able.

07 Dec, '21
Mantauk Merged

I've noticed this is mainly an issue with HDD speeds vs SSD speeds. For example, on my computer (WD_Black 2T PCIe 4.0), the game takes about a minute to download, install and verify. Meanwhile on my girlfriends computer (which has 2 Samsung Pro SSDs and 1 WD hybrid HDD) the installer seems to prefer to write and read the entire archive to the HDD before install can complete. This can take upwards of an hour for a simple 32MB update. With a goal of daily updates, this means I have to log onto her computer an hour before she gets off work every day or we don't have time to play. This is the only game we own (out of a few hundred on Steam) where this has proven to be an issue. A fix or workaround is needed.

08 Dec, '21
Mike Merged

It is verifying AND moving 50GB, not just verifying... This results in up to two hours of waiting.

08 Dec, '21
Ariel Masciotta Merged

This should definitely be a more upvoted suggestion.
SSDs, DO have a finite life. It's called TBW(Tera Bytes Written). Anyone who has mined Chia, started to realize that their SSDs have a lifebar that is constantly decreasing.
So, I took a close look at the performance counters while patching, and here's what I found
5 minutes patch:
Average writes of 500MB/s, with peaks of 700MB/s.
Let's say, 500MB * 60 * 5 = 150.000 = 150GB.
Every time the game patches, you're spending 150GB of your SSD life.
Most low end SSDs have a lot less TBW in their life, for example:
WD Green M2 SSD:
240GB - 80TBW
WD Blue M2 SSD:
240GB - 100TBW
500GB - 200TBW
1TB - 400TBW
HP EX950 M2 SSD:
2TB - 1400TBW.

Patching process should definitely get patched :)

08 Dec, '21
JGIGame Merged

Hello. On the steam platform, when the patch is released, the entire game is loaded (48GB). This happens for all users and brings huge inconvenience. Please fix this issue. Sincerely, a player with the nickname JGIGame =)

08 Dec, '21
Iván Alfredo Fraire Garza Merged

Im having problems downloading or updating the game, it says i have not enough free disk space but i have 600 GB free disk space.

If i try to download another game i can download it with no problem.

I tried verifying integrity of game files but it says all the files are ok, then i uninstall to try reinstalling the game but now i cant download it because it says i have not enough free disk space, any idea of how i can solve this?

i tried too cleaning steam download cache and switching download region but not a success.

08 Dec, '21
Matt Merged

Looks like the game is only 51gb on disk. Seems odd.

09 Dec, '21
Kasper Merged

Every time Icarus is updated in steam, the download goes to 100%, but it never finishes installing. At least not within an hour or two, because that's how long I've waited until I've decided to reinstall the entire game instead. Download works fine, game plays fine, but so far I had to reinstall the entire game with every hotfix.

09 Dec, '21
JGIGame Merged

Updating the data. I contacted the Steam platform and received the following response in a brief form described below:

Hello!

Thank you for contacting Steam support and the information provided, including the screenshot.

It is impossible to launch the game on Steam without installing the latest updates before that. 48.7GB is the total amount of game files. This does not mean that all of them will be overwritten, but the files will be changed according to the update algorithm set by the developers.

In response, I indicated that all the specified data is overwritten with any update, the answer has not yet been received to this effect.

As I understand it, there is some inconsistency in the algorithms for updating the game on both sides. I hope my information will be useful for you in solving this problem. Sincerely, JGIGame.

11 Dec, '21
Andrew Merged

Great game, lots of fun, however, patch update file size grows after the patch installs and continues to count up until my computers memory fills up or crashes. I can work around this by reinstalling the game, but honestly cannot in good judgment rewrite 50 gigs on my SSD every time this game needs to patch. This is unfortunate because I enjoy playing this game.

15 Dec, '21
Erik Merged

Fix the issue where you download the whole game (49.1 gig) for a 32.8 meg patch.

15 Dec, '21
Boris Merged

Another update 14.8 MB, and another 49 GB to reinstall after that...

This is really a pain in the ass.

I've read that "it's not the developpers fault, Steam is the problem"

Mmmmm yeah, may be, but it would be much appreciated to find the source of the problem and bring us a solution !!

15 Dec, '21
Nsanehunter Merged

Why must we update the whole game each patch? This is 49 gb that counts toward data cap each time.

16 Dec, '21
darkness3691 Merged

Please Fix your patching system. Should not have to download the entire game to update a 2.5mb file

16 Dec, '21
OhYeah Merged

That's not what its doing. It running a verification process

16 Dec, '21
LedZeppelin Merged

The updates are very welcomed and thank you for this for this. Every game in Steam update is downloading very fast, every single ICARUS's update , even if is a 2.5 MB is taking half an hour. What is happening ? BTW,

16 Dec, '21
LedZeppelin Merged

And the update is over ! Corrupted update files. Try again :)))

16 Dec, '21
Vex Merged

Ask Steam/Valve :)

16 Dec, '21
Maoam Merged

You're not installing the whole game. Due to file corruption issues Steam just verifies all game data after each patch.

18 Dec, '21
Owl Merged

With every update the whole game (> 40GB) will be moved. That takes a lot of time and isn't healty for solid state disk who are limited in their writing processes. Maybe it could be changed ...

Best regards

18 Dec, '21
Arellya Merged

for 3 days in a row now ive had updates. i download it in less then a minute for the smaller ones but it takes almost 30 minutes forthe patch to install. every patch requires the game to reinstall every single bit of 46.4 GB. sooooo unoptimized. it wouldnt be so bad if it wasnt literally every single day. optimize your updates because 30 minutes to apply a patch less than 1 mb is ridiculous.

Also while wearing leather armor, the helm clips big time and gets in your vision in first person view. it seems to only be in the arctic biome, but i have not tested it in others yet. its to the point you cant see anything at times in first person, and are forced to not wear the leather helmet or only play in 3rd person.

18 Dec, '21
Jacob Merged

We cant have the whole game re-written after every update guys. Yall have pushed like 20MB updates, only for all 48.9GB to be re-written to disk after the update is downloaded. This is thrashing drives for no reason. This process leaves much to be desired.

20 Dec, '21
The Unknown Merged

so i already made a post about this and wish your website would start sending me notifications again about if i post was autherised (i haven't been gettting emails from my OP's since the first week of release)

So every single time we update - we get *Updating game* which updates the entire 40+Gig THEN it says *Installing* the entire package... then VERIFYING the entire package - NO OTHER GAME does 3 passes!!! and it is KILLING my system and drives... do you want to buy everyone a new pc???

20 Dec, '21
Hilte

I have been having the same issue, however even to extremer lengths. Every single time an update comes out I have got the chance of this taking closer to 10 hours to patch, sometimes even completely flatlining as seen in the picture below. I cannot play this game when there is a daily update taking a day to patch. I am running my game on a Samsung Evo 960 m.2 SSD, so these times are completely ludicrous.

20 Dec, '21
Baalzamon Merged

Please fix your patching structure....for every little patch or hotfix the whole game overwrite himself...so every 2 days with 50gb change....this kills ssd's slowly

20 Dec, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin

"Patch Download" (suggested by Nsanehunter on 2021-12-15), including upvotes (5) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.

20 Dec, '21
Elissa - Producer Admin

"[Bug] Patch is taking a while" (suggested by John on 2021-10-09), including upvotes (46) and comments (11), was merged into this suggestion.

21 Dec, '21
W2D2 Merged

Modern SSDs can be overwritten daily for years before it becomes a problem. So calling it an SSD killer is an overstatement.

I've seen this patching problem in other games and they eventually fixed it. I would expect them to solve it if it is really a problem.

As I read it there is a 2.1MB file making changes to 6.6GB subset of data (files) in a 48GB total set. So it's probably only just a few data pages being modified.

31 Dec, '21
Andrew Merged

To note, I see posts suggesting that this update cycle involves how steam interacts with unreal engine 4, suggesting that all unreal engine 4 games need to patch the whole game like this. However, google "steam patches whole game" and you'll find a load of hits from Nov 2021, somewhere around the first patches of Icarus and not much else. The suggestion that this is how steam interacts with unreal is nonsense. I've never had this happen for any other game, unreal or otherwise. I personally refuse to play the game until this is fixed I am not wasting my SSD rewrites, which ultimately leads to early degradation of my computer storage, it's like running a defrag on 50 GB of your solid state drive just so you can play the game. This isn't just an "oh wait out the patch install time you whiner" issue, this is going to lead to a lot of people running into storage failures, and possibly complete loss of their computer and it's files.

31 Dec, '21
Robert Merged

Whether this is a steam issue or a Icarus issue it needs to be addressed.

14 Jan, '22
Raul Motta Merged

I have same problem , last update, i desinstall and reinstall to play, today another update stuck in steam

14 Jan, '22
Raul Motta Merged

All update the same, 100% but not finish. Last time i desinstall and reinstall, but today another update another 100% 1h and not finish i chek files, close and open steam. still 100% but not finish

14 Jan, '22
Raul Motta Merged

All new update on steam is crazy for me, is download 100% but not finish intall. last time i desinstall and reinstall but today another update, same 100% but not finish, i try verification files, stop and restart steam after 1h wait. not work. i stuck

15 Jan, '22
Steve Merged

Yes, I'll be sending them a bill for a new SSD by the time they fix this. It's a completely ridiculous update process.

16 Jan, '22
Elissa - Producer Admin Merged

"[Observation] Please fix the Steam Updater!" (suggested by Nathan on 2021-12-04), including upvotes (3) and comments (2), was merged into this suggestion.

17 Jan, '22
Nathan Merged

My issue isn't download speeds. I have a slower SSD. It'll download a large chunk, then sit there trying to process it for 10 mins at 13MB/s as seen in my screenshot. download another chunk, sit there and process. Other games process this OK, I only noticed this with THIS game, Had to buy another SSD to not wait an hour between updates.

I feel sorry for anyone that installed this on a Hard drive.

22 Jan, '22
Harris

These patch verification's are taking forever, Ive never had a game that takes 20 mins to launch. 143Mb file and I wait 23 mins while 43G or so patches and this is on a SSD.

05 Feb, '22
Nysch Merged

The reason the patch process takes so long is because ON TOP of asking people to REVERIFY on their steam options, your also FORCING them to verify every time they download the game. This causes no end of frustration with Patches and Reinstallations. Trust Steam and the People for once.

08 Feb, '22
Stumont Merged

My friends and I have stopped playing Icarus because of this update problem. We only play once a week, so any time we get together to play we have to wait half an hour or more for the game to update before we can play it. It's a total deal breaker.

This is not a Steam issue. Of the hundreds of games in my Steam library I've never had this problem and no other games I'm currently keeping up to date are having this problem either.

It is also not a download issue. The downloads always happen in a reasonable amount of time comparable to other games. The problem is what happens once the download is complete and on disk. Even for a tiny update, it will rewrite 45+ GB of data on disk.

04 Mar, '22
TemporalWolf

>15 patches that have each done 50GB of writes to my SSD. I'm around a terabyte of data written in 4 months by Icarus as confirmed by CrystalDiskInfo. 3TBW per year just to update your game?

05 Mar, '22
Ornilx Merged

It takes time, and after all, overwriting gradually finishes off the old hdd as well.

28 Mar, '22
Michael Lester-Garcia Merged

This is a huge pain in the arse. Not only because it takes forever, but it throttles my entire system since it is eating the hell out of my SSD which impacts my ability to do anything while applying a 5MB update to ICARUS

30 Mar, '22
CommanderCoyler Merged

It's really annoying to have to reinstall the game every time there's an update.

01 Apr, '22
Manuel Merged

How come that everytime there's an update, it has to reinstall the whole game??? Can you please fix this issue? It takes too much time just for an update.

04 Apr, '22
Elissa - Producer Admin Merged

Hey! We're fully aware of this issue and are looking into it internally, it's mostly a Steam issue at this point and we don't have heaps of bandwidth to work on it right now.

22 Apr, '22
Rene Merged

need to download the hole 50gb of to play evry single update... pls fix it...

08 May, '22
Lianail

The updates need to be broken into more components so that fewer items have to be sent and then uncompressed. Work on creating smaller segments so that targeted deltas can upgraded rather than the entire game.

15 Jun, '22
Alexis Merged

At the moment the way the game is update is totally crap, for someone like me it's faster to re download the game than updating it everytime (I'm running on 1gb internet with SSD with 7gb read and write)

02 Jul, '22
Lurig Merged

every time i uppdate Icarus it take redicilously long time! even when the update is only small it seems to reload the whole game and takes so long time, this is the only game that does this on steam, Can you please fix this problem

06 Aug, '22
Michael Lester-Garcia Merged

This is not an internet speed issue, as suggested by an Admin who apparently has never ever updated the game themselves...
The update process often runs twice, and seems to try and validate every single byte, every single time, taking at least half an hour to complete, and often up to 1 or 2 hours!
This is literally the only game I have with this issue of hundreds of Steam games. Even with my SSD chugging away at 200MB/s or more it is a long and painful process.
2.9GB update downloads in a matter of few minutes, but it has taken over an hour to actually update and 'm still waiting!

I should just delete and download it fresh every week.

16 Sep, '22
Big Fuzzy Merged

i cant complete the update. Says it is missing downloaded files?

23 Sep, '22
Sabre070 - Designer Admin Merged

"Better downloading system on steam" (suggested by Alexis on 2022-06-15), including upvotes (4) and comments (0), was merged into this suggestion.