Steam Client Update - Select Content Server Regions!

Post by trog @ 01:17pm 04/02/09 | 46 Comments

A new update for Steam has been released, adding in support to specify what region you're for the content downloads. This is a huge deal and a feature that we've been pretty vocal about not being in the client, especially in Australia where downloading gigabytes of data can not only take a long time but also have big effects on your monthly download limits. Here's the full list of changes:

Steam Client

* Added ability to specify content download region (in Settings->downloads)
* Fixed a condition that would prevent Steam from automatically applying game updates until game launch
* Fixed a bug preventing in-game status for 3rd party games
* Fixed running a non-Steam shortcut not changing user status to in-game
* Updated processor detection for "System Information" window and hardware survey
* Detect Windows 7 correctly in the hardware survey/system info dialog
* Fixed a bug affecting Dawn of War II beta participants in certain languages
* Fixed a bug in the game overlay affecting some Dawn of War II beta participants who have the game overlay disabled
* Fixed a rare case where Steam could prevent games from launching
* Fix crash when right-clicking a text edit control with an input locale that is new with Vista
* Updated German localization
* Fixed some potential string truncation in non-English locales
* Repaired layout of controls in Event announcement popup window
* Additional network API warnings for Steamworks partners

Midda points out in the comments you can even select certain ISPs so you can set your Content Server selection manually, at least if you're with Telstra/BigPond. Everyone else will just have to set 'Australia' and hope for the best - see this screenshot for a look at the new option.

steam australia

Latest Comments

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Midda
Posted 01:20pm 04/2/09

There's an option in there called Australia (Telstra), so that allows Bigpond users to lock themselves into unmetered content.

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Jim
Posted 01:21pm 04/2/09

beaten!

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ravn0s
Posted 01:21pm 04/2/09

While it's not as awesome as it should be (obviously for Australians the holy grail would be to be able to individually select your Content Server provider manually), it's still a good step forward.

theres an Australia (Telstra) option for those with bigpond. :)

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trog
Posted 01:28pm 04/2/09

Sorry, I wrote that while my Steam was still updating and posted excitedly. I've updated it with more (accurate) infoz and screenshot.

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ctd
Posted 01:36pm 04/2/09

Telstra must be the only aussie content servers with all content? Because I know that if you locked yourself into 3fl you wouldn't get every game.

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BatS***
Posted 02:07pm 04/2/09

This is great for people on telstra/other ISPs with content servers but there is still no built in scheduler. God damn it.

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parabol
Posted 02:29pm 04/2/09

Telstra must be the only aussie content servers with all content?

Would anyone but Valve be able to confirm that? Given that they are the only ones who get a say as to what's on what content server based on available resources (disk space, bandwidth, memory, etc). The providers don't have any control.

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Obes
Posted 02:39pm 04/2/09

I'd almost get a telstra account for that.

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ctd
Posted 02:45pm 04/2/09

Would anyone but Valve be able to confirm that?

Just wondering why they would have telstra and not 'Australia (internode)' or 'Australia (3FL)'.

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Crakaveli
Posted 03:00pm 04/2/09

only thing good about telstra.. but i would gladly get rid of unmetered website to get a decent download limit and the ability to get other ISP'S here.

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RUFiO
Posted 03:04pm 04/2/09

Need scheduler

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trog
Posted 03:09pm 04/2/09

Just wondering why they would have telstra and not 'Australia (internode)' or 'Australia (3FL)'.

My first thought is that it's because BP have both a filtered server (for BP users only) and a public access server (for all users).

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tequila
Posted 03:15pm 04/2/09

you know what would be even more AWESOME

the ability to ignore people's text & voice commands, not just their +voicerecord

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Jim
Posted 03:16pm 04/2/09

Would anyone but Valve be able to confirm that?

I can infirm it!
At this very moment the bigpond steam content servers do not have all the content, but the rest of the content is being transferred by valve as of last night. So hopefully within the next few days the bigpond servers _will_ have the entire steam content set.

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trog
Posted 03:17pm 04/2/09

...or so they say, and only until so long as they add a new game :)

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Twisted
Posted 03:22pm 04/2/09

Telstra must be the only aussie content servers with all content? Because I know that if you locked yourself into 3fl you wouldn't get every game.

According to the guys who run the 3FL servers, VALVe now push all content onto their Steam servers. That was as of Sept 08. Things might have changed, I guess they can't really tell. I don't understand why they wouldn't go ahead and give an option for all content servers by region....

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RUFiO
Posted 03:28pm 04/2/09

Any Aussie internet user worth their salt doesn't have a connection with Telstra anyway.

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Jim
Posted 03:45pm 04/2/09

false

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ViscoS
Posted 03:52pm 04/2/09

It's better than optus.

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ara
Posted 04:23pm 04/2/09

Any Aussie internet user worth their salt doesn't have a connection with Telstra anyway.

This isn't whirlpool, no need for that rhetoric.

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ara
Posted 04:25pm 04/2/09

Just wondering why they would have telstra and not 'Australia (internode)' or 'Australia (3FL)'.

Telstra dedicate a sizable amount of resources to steam, not just for Bigpond users but for all users. Also, the current repo is in the order of 1.6TB, maybe the others can't handle it.

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Midda
Posted 04:29pm 04/2/09

Any Aussie internet user worth their salt doesn't have a connection with Telstra anyway.

If it weren't for the tiny download quotas, I'd be with Telstra. They're reliable, have really good customer service (in my recent experience), and heaps of unmetered content.

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RUFiO
Posted 04:39pm 04/2/09

Lets just say I've never known a gamer to willingly connect with Telstra, they usually just get lumped with it because mum and dad have a home phone with them. :P

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trog
Posted 04:43pm 04/2/09

Lets just say I've never known a gamer to willingly connect with Telstra, they usually just get lumped with it because mum and dad have a home phone with them. :P

I know one or two.. not sure if you noticed but Telstra have the biggest online gaming service in Australia (at least it was the last time I checked) with the most services and the most features. Also its developed by the best looking dudes in the industry; you should definitely hook them up with your sister

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TiT
Posted 04:54pm 04/2/09

If it weren't for the tiny download quotas, I'd be with Telstra. They're reliable, have really good customer service (in my recent experience), and heaps of unmetered content.

Is that a joke?

I know one or two.. not sure if you noticed but Telstra have the biggest online gaming service in Australia (at least it was the last time I checked) with the most services and the most features. Also its developed by the best looking dudes in the industry; you should definitely hook them up with your sister

Only like Game Arena for CSS cause of the map choices and i know most of the idiots but play all other games on Internode..

last edited by TiT at 16:54:35 04/Feb/09

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Midda
Posted 05:29pm 04/2/09

Is that a joke?

No. How often is Bigpond down? I was with them for 2 years while studying, and I don't remember ever having the connection go down, except for when my modem died. Never had any retarded lag spikes either.

As for customer service, the last time I called Telstra, I didn't talk to a stupid robot, I didn't have to press any buttons, and I wasn't put in a queue. I was put straight through to an Australian customer service rep who was incredibly easy to deal with.

So if I could actually get a 100GB+ download quota without paying through the nose for it, yeah, Telstra would be a great option.

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Twisted
Posted 05:29pm 04/2/09

Telstra dedicate a sizable amount of resources to steam, not just for Bigpond users but for all users.

AFAIK the 3FL and Internode Steam service is open to everyone and those guys reckon they have all the Steam content too. I doubt the data transfers are a problem either, if they were an ISP wouldn't be hosting Steam content servers.

Telstra have the biggest online gaming service in Australia (at least it was the last time I checked) with the most services and the most features. Also its developed by the best looking dudes in the industry; you should definitely hook them up with your sister

Can't argue against that...I have a brother? :)

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Mitch
Posted 06:10pm 04/2/09

* Fixed a condition that would prevent Steam from automatically applying game updates until game launch

Had that problem alot >.<

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Tim Tibbetts
Posted 06:15pm 04/2/09

I just read this awesome news over on the Internode Page (http://games.on.net/article/4887/Steam_Choose_your_own_location)

(Remember, all content downloaded from Australian Steam content servers is free for Internode customers, regardless of which ISP is hosting the files!)

Internode wins again.

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ara
Posted 06:15pm 04/2/09

Lets just say I've never known a gamer to willingly connect with Telstra, they usually just get lumped with it because mum and dad have a home phone with them. :P

maybe your problem is that all the gamers you know still live at home with their parents.

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whoop
Posted 06:23pm 04/2/09

What I'd like is the ability to install steam to say, c:\program files and then have the game cache in say d:\steam. I remember being able to do that through config file hax or registry hax when steam first came out but the last time I tried it they'd foiled my efforts, it would be nice if they'd just make it a menu option :(

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TiT
Posted 06:25pm 04/2/09

you havent spoken to bigpond or telstra lately have you...

its full of robots just test it!

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Crakaveli
Posted 06:33pm 04/2/09

Lets just say I've never known a gamer to willingly connect with Telstra, they usually just get lumped with it because mum and dad have a home phone with them. :P

Or you have people who can get nothing but telsta. And the people that try just ended up with 3 bills from 3 different ISP's after attempting to connect and then being told it can't be connected to their home.

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d^
Posted 06:36pm 04/2/09

Telstra is hilariously bad and I deal with them on a day to day basis.

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Freewheelin
Posted 07:22pm 04/2/09

I only left bigpond cable because iinet adsl2+ was a better deal.

the cable was rock solid for 5+ years and i had a 100 day connection uptime at some point. doesnt really get any more reliable than that.

i also used to get an awesome connection to any game server in australia i played on

pretty cool new feature to have on steam. it is a shame there arent other major isps listed though

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RUFiO
Posted 07:25pm 04/2/09

The fact that they offer unmetred content hardly makes up for their lack of quota. At the end of the day I'd rather have the huge (150GB) limit that I have and be able to download anything from anywhere and not worry about getting charged for excess usage.

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ctd
Posted 07:28pm 04/2/09

I know that 3FL doesn't have company of heroes content because I have been trying to download it for ages... In the end I realised I could just copy my retail CoH data from my desktop onto my laptop steam CoH folder and it works...

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TiT
Posted 07:30pm 04/2/09

well i know for fact 3fl has gta 4 if anyone is interested

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Jim
Posted 07:38pm 04/2/09

the price and quota of bp cable does suck but that's the only downside for me. and it's not enough to make me cancel, although I have come close a couple of times. the speed is awesome and it's rock solid like freewheelin said

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parabol
Posted 07:52pm 04/2/09

you know what would be even more AWESOME

the ability to ignore people's text & voice commands, not just their +voicerecord

Text is ignored when you mute people. Don't know about voice commands.

Only downside is when people change their names, they can't be muted until you rejoin the server and the client picks up the current names. Plus weird-charactered nicknames can't still be muted afaik.

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Mitch
Posted 10:46pm 04/2/09

Text only gets muted from admin doesnt it. Ive only noticed it for voice only when using player list.

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rolo_tomasi
Posted 11:36pm 04/2/09

bout f***en time.

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parabol
Posted 12:13am 05/2/09

Text only gets muted from admin doesnt it.

Huh? You mute a player as usual, then you can't hear them talk nor see anything they type. In TF2 that is.

I only noticed it like a couple of months ago. Not sure when they actually implemented it.

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Midda
Posted 12:29am 05/2/09

you havent spoken to bigpond or telstra lately have you...

I think last week counts as recent. It's quite possible that they just hate you. Can you blame them?

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Mitch
Posted 01:55am 05/2/09

Huh? You mute a player as usual, then you can't hear them talk nor see anything they type. In TF2 that is.

This is in CSS. Its voice only unfortunately. An admin will need to mute with admins powers to stop text >.<

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thraxjor
Posted 05:29am 05/2/09

You guys do know that if you are on internode, all Aussies steam servers are counted as unmetered content, check out the internode faq

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