Streamline the Steam update process, please

[dragon01 902]

For some reason, ArmA 3 reserves an obscene amount of HD space whenever it updates on Steam. It took 8GB with the current Dev Branch update, and it behaves that way since Alpha. No other Steam game does that, and I see no reason whatsoever for an 850MB update to hog 8GB as it downloads. Does it back up the whole game to update? While I do get the "hogged" space back after the update completes, if I don't have such space available (and I've been running low lately), it clogs up the disk and refuses to work at all.

It doesn't happen with any other game, so I think the issue can be resolved by BIS devs. Since whatever is filling up the disk doesn't go away when I turn off Steam (only if I re-start the download and pause it really quickly), this is a problem, since being so low on HD space causes a number of other problems. I don't know if I should put it up on bug tracker, or will the forum thread suffice?

[tonygrunt 10]

This is the way steam works it's not going to change.

Steam creates working copies of the files that are being updated. If a 20MB update changes a 100MB file you will need 100MB more disk space but if a 20MB update changes 10 files that occupy 5GB you will need 5GB extra disk space.

[dragon01 902]

Then why updating games such as Tropico 4 does not cause such disk usage? I've had a 100MB update today and it didn't really take much more than that. Are the files more fragmented, or something?

[tonygrunt 10]

Then why updating games such as Tropico 4 does not cause such disk usage? I've had a 100MB update today and it didn't really take much more than that. Are the files more fragmented, or something?

Because it didn't change any big files or a lot of them.

Today's Tropico 4 update changed/created 2 files with combined usage 94.7 MB, you only needed 94.7 MB extra space. Now if it changed only 1 byte in Structures.hpk (1.14GB) you would need an additional 1.14GB of disk space to patch the copy.

Arma 3 going from Dev to Stable is a 834MB update that changes 64 files with combined usage 8.16GB, you will need 8.16GB extra space.