Microsoft, Sony, Valve advise delaying PlayStation and Xbox updates

Streaming video services have already taken a quality hit to relieve pressure on the internet during the coronavirus pandemic, now another entertainment provider is scaling down their downloads.

The pandemic-induced requirement to spend most of your time in your house has also forced content distributors to review how much traffic they’re responsible for on the internet as people try to work from home.

Streaming video on demand networks like Disney+ and Netflix have lowered bit rates and quality to lessen the load on internet networks under pressure around the world.

Google’s YouTube has also said it will drop quality to lessen the load.

Now, video games are in the spotlight too.

According to an email seen by the New York Times, Microsoft has now asked developers on its Xbox platform to limit the release of updates to off-peak hours when there is less congestion on the networks.

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Microsoft is asking developers to be mindful of when they schedule automatic updates.

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Games are often updated after launch, sometimes on the same day they are released, to add new features and fix any problems.

These updates can be several gigabytes or more in size in some cases.

Sony and its PlayStation gaming brand have also made changes aimed at “preserving internet access for the entire community”, announcing in a blog post last week that it would slow video game downloads around the world, though it’s believed that restriction currently only applies to the US and Europe.

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Sony’s PlayStation business is the company’s largest single unit by profit. Picture: Billy Kwok / Bloomberg

Valve, the video game company that also runs the dominant Steam distribution storefront for PC games, said it will also stop automatically updating all games in your library, instead delivering updates only for games you’ve played in the last three days.

You can also turn off automatic updates altogether if you want to go a step further. The Steam client also has options to limit the amount of bandwidth it can use.

In the settings menu under the download tab there is an option to limit downloads by kilobytes or megabytes per second.

Originally published as Microsoft, Sony, Valve advise delaying PlayStation and Xbox updates