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Valve patents new way of handling game files that could allow playing while downloading without devs doing anything
- Thread starter dex3108
- Start date
Mortal Kombat X already did this on Steam, but somewhat hacked, they just divided the full game into free "DLCs", and you downloaded the base and let the rest download in the meantime.
Similar to what PS4/5 and Xbox does.
Similar to what PS4/5 and Xbox does.
But it's cool that they're adding this to the client, even better if the devs don't really need to do anything!
EDIT: dumb double post, sorry!
EDIT: dumb double post, sorry!
Damn, that's really cool. I love Valve's approach of making more or less feature-agnostic implementations like these.
Software patents are bad, always. Let's hope it gets rejected.
(this doesn't mean it's not a cool thing for Valve to implement in Steam: the idea that they should then block anyone else doing anything remotely similar is the gross bit.)
(this doesn't mean it's not a cool thing for Valve to implement in Steam: the idea that they should then block anyone else doing anything remotely similar is the gross bit.)
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ps4 and ps5 do too, but this could be a more advanced and automated version of that system
This was a horrible implementation and solution on Steam, as it didn't work as expected, and was bad enough that they had to change to the more simple download method shortly after. There's a reason most games on Steam haven't used that kind of cobbled together solution
The patent is for something quite different
"Other examples include freeing up space by removing unused data, and prefetching data to decrease latency when loading.
This feature does not require game developers to change anything."
This one sounds more impressive to me
This feature does not require game developers to change anything."
This one sounds more impressive to me
Indeed! Still more curious of how it would work in practice within Steam as a user, in terms of reliability, speed, and utility
It would be cool if there was an option to just download assets of a specific quality. Someone with a weak PC for example, would have no need for high or ultra quality assets so an option to not download them would save on time and space. Especially good for the Steam Deck, where you could have "Deck recommended" assets chosen by the devs. Though this is not what the patent is about (and I believe it would require work from the devs).
Yeah, but somebody in the gamingonlinux comments made a good point about this being a possible protection against being sued in the future. It makes sense as to what happened with the Steam controller.
Or the fact that someone tried to patent the idea of Steam Chat and tried to sue people over it. Most software patent are stupid, but the problem is you either patent them, or end up having to fight vs patent trolls over how generic some implementations are.
This is what I want. Games like Doom Eternal would really only need the High assets at the most on Steam Deck, and given that I've heard the Ultra and Nightmare assets make up over half the install size... well, that's a lot of space being taken up by nothing useful.
Someone mentioned potentially using telemetry to collect data on when specific game data is needed based on user play throughs of the game, kinda like pre-cached shaders. So I guess theoretically it would be able to download the game in segments, so in the example of a game divided into neat levels like Ninja Gaiden, it could download the 1st level while the game is loading up, then take care of the rest while you're playing. Although maybe they would have even more fine-tune control so that it can start playing from even smaller chunks of data.
It's not ideal, although it could be a "defensive" patent. After all the work on Steam controller, they got sued by SCUF and were dealing with that for over 5 years, so they may be trying to help make sure that they can do what they want without getting sued by someone else.
I think it was this?
Xbox One’s July update includes a clever new FastStart feature for game downloads
FastStart will download the important parts of games first so you can launch them quicker
www.theverge.com
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Steam did this too with Half-Life 2 (with GCF, removed with SteamPipe update in 2013 or so). But it's not about doing it, but how it's done.
Much easier to get devs to support if they don't have to do anything.
Steam Controller patent is just one of 21 patent suits against Valve in recent years.
Better patent everything so you can't be so easily sued.
Some are really bizarre like
That, and as I suspected when this feature was mentioned elsewhere, since it needs to learn, this is of no use to day one buyers.
I wonder how it'll work for users with slow internet. Will it have to pause or stutter the game to load on demand? Say e.g. you have a very fast player speeding through the levels who also happens to have slow download speeds.
If there's going to be a chance of stuttering I think I'd just choose to wait for 100% downloaded.
Which is what Microsoft did. They even managed to get it working with BC 360 games.
I remember trying it out with a lateish game Viva Pinata save to try and trip it up and it handled it just fine. I think the game froze for a bit while it downloaded some more? But I remember being impressed that it worked at all.
I'm not convinced they really need billions in annual profits to allow a few engineers on a couple hundred K each to work on stuff like this.
Consoles do it in a way that is work-intensive for developers. You basically have to separate out your content into chunks manually. This would be a huge step forward if it truly is automated.
Yeah, the other stuff was good enough, but this could possibly free up a lot of space in my drives once is implemented.
OP
OP
Main point of this patent is not that Valve did it, main point is how they did it. Big thing is that devs don't need to do anything if they don't want to and everything is handled by Steam. That means no need for special levels or modes that need to be downloaded first so they can be played while rest is downloading. And then we have other applications named in the patent.
Tech giants and big developers usually use software patents just to keep patent trolls and opportunistic lawyers from trying to extort money from them. For example Sega has patented the game mechanic where you are driving a car and an arrow points at where you need to go, but you don't see Sega suing other developers who implement that in their games.
Can the license this to Apple? I'd love to get half of my iPhone memory back
My first exposure to a "similar" technology was Guild Wars from 2005. You downloaded the base and when you loaded to another zone it will download all the assets, then it would continue to download in the background. Blew my mind and wished all games could do that. Valve <3
This is basically (or exactly) what Microsoft said they would do for this generation (not sure how widely it's used pew, but IIRC there are already some examples of games that you can start early without devs doing anything). The goal was to use machine learning to figure out what parts of the game were needed and prioritize that. Then it would show up with a Ready to Start marker in the queue.
I'm sure valve is doing more than that, that I'm not picking up. Otherwise, I'm not sure I like this type of thing being patented...
I'm sure valve is doing more than that, that I'm not picking up. Otherwise, I'm not sure I like this type of thing being patented...
there was a digital distribution store that tried to do this about a decade ago. maybe earlier than that. i can't remember the name. i'm not sure if that was the same implementation or how successful it was
Yeah, sounds similar to Xbox fast start.
Same idea, devs supposedly don't need to do anything. However it was only rolled out to select games on Xbox which suggests there was some kind of problem with the implementation
It sounds like such a cool idea. I hope Valve gets it working and I'd like to see it rolled out to all Xbox games at some point.
Uh huh.
Literally the first result for searching DDG for "sega patent arrow driving catr" (I didn't even spell car right, I'm an animal): https://patentarcade.com/2010/07/case-analysis-sega-v-fox.html
What you're describing (the "warchest" / "MAD" mentality) happens as well, but not to the exclusion of this kind of scummy bullshit. Large companies also routinely use their warchest (as the patent trolls do) to punch down to smaller orgs who cannot handle the lawyer fees to strike back.
Software patents are shit, end of story. They have no place existing in the first place.
I don't think that's true. Pretty sure Blizzard's implementation doesn't work whatsoever for games not using their tech.