Steam: play a game before the download is complete, it will soon be possible

Steam could soon acquire a feature that has been present on Playstation and Xbox consoles for a few years now: the ability to launch a game before the download is complete. In any case, this is suggested by a patent filed by Valve last year, and made public on September 21, 2021.

steam instant game
Credit: Steam

While Steam has just offered a big facelift to its downloads page, Valve’s gaming platform could soon acquire a feature that has been present on Playstation and Xbox consoles for a few years now: the possibility of launching a game before the end of the download. Indeed and for the moment, PC players on Steam are forced to wait for the end of the installation of a title before being able to play it.

A process that can be long and frustrating depending on the quality of the Internet connection. However, the creator of the specialized site SteamDB Pavel Djundik spotted a patent filed by Valve in March 2020 and made public this Tuesday, September 21, 2021. It describes an “instant play” system that would allow users to start to play a game a few moments after the download has started.

Steam wants to let users enjoy their games faster

To enjoy gaming faster, you may look for verified Steam accounts for sale. To do this, Valve would use “a file system proxy component that is configured to track play operations performed by the game executable during a game session“. By extension, this system would therefore allow “to analyze access data to generate data usable by client machines and to implement various functions related to the game, including, but not limited to instant play ”.

In other words, this system would prioritize the installation of certain files (usually the first few levels of a title) to allow players to launch the game without having to wait for the download to complete. In addition, this patent also mentions the removal of unused game data blocks for free local memory resources, as well as local pre-extraction of game data for reduce latency during the game.

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Last point, this system would not require any action on the part of game developers, its integration being managed exclusively by Valve and Steam. But before thanking Steam for this feature, you will have to be patient. Like any patent, there is no 100% guarantee that this technology will see the light of day.

Source: Free Patents Online

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