Valve Is “not Planning To Disable Downloading Outdated Builds” On Steam

Replace - September 28, 2021: Valve has responded to claims that Steam might be eradicating the option to obtain older recreation variations.

September 28 - Valve has shared a statement with PCGamer that explains the studio doesn’t have plans to remove the option to download older recreation builds. “We are literally not planning to disable downloading outdated builds,” a spokesperson tells the site. “What we''re working on is an method on dealing with edge instances involving unowned content material, and helping companions more easily take down builds that must be eliminated for issues like copyright issues. We’ll have more to share on that work when it’s ready to ship.” Authentic story follows.

The newest Steam beta has added a function that seemingly removes the ability for users to roll back game updates or play older versions of video games on Steam. Beneath the new model, users can not download depots of Steam games to play earlier updates of games they own - and plenty of are sad about this transformation.

There are various games that change radically between updates - there’s a whole fan collective devoted to discovering and archiving all the assorted versions of Minecraft over time, for instance, and the likes of Counter-Strike update commonly with large changes.

As of proper now, it’s utterly attainable to obtain and play older versions of games owned on Steam with the assistance of someplace like SteamDB - all it''s good to do is discover the depot of the model you need to play. Nevertheless, MINECRAFT update of Steam has seemingly put a stop to this observe - so as soon as this replace goes dwell in Steam proper nobody will be able to play older versions on Valve’s shopper.

This was spotted by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik, who confirms that it would now be inconceivable to obtain older recreation depots of Steam video games and play them with this new code in place - not less than if Steam enforces it for all video games. Pavel also says that this means SteamDB will now must “go back to the instances the place it could only observe recordsdata for what it owns” if it goes ahead. You may learn Pavel’s full, detailed rationalization over on SteamDB.

Last Steam beta launched an important change to sport downloads.

With this alteration, it is not potential to download older game versions, because client asks for a code (GetManifestRequestCode) that rotates each five minutes.

- Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) September 23, 2021

A lot of Steam tinkerers are upset with this modification and are asking for it to be reversed. Whether it will likely be before going dwell is completely up to Valve, in fact.