It's a big patch.

No I didn't and if it were a patch, it would have said so on Steam News. Not to mention, I also have to re-download Magicka and Super Meat Boy. Thank god Steam is unmetered through my ISP's server////

A bug in Steam like others have said. It affected The Witcher 2 as well forcing people to download the entire game again just to apply the patch. The latest patch to Shogun 2 simply adds the Summer Son achievement for the Steam summer sale so if that's causing people to download the game again then ouch.

Actually the issue with The Witcher 2 was not a bug but a limitation of how Steam handles updates. Steam never actually patches anything; rather than using the age-old method of applying a diff patch it instead downloads entirely new copies of all the affected files. This results in situations like a patch that is normally 20MB being 500MB+ on Steam.

Developers are increasingly moving towards using several giant package files instead of hundreds of individual files due to the numerous advantages of this approach (for both them and the players), but Steam's continued lack of patching support means that this sensible design decision results in ridiculously huge update sizes for Steam players. :(

This is where cloud-based gaming looks better than steam.

So big in fact, that every last bit of data was changed and needs to be redownloaded! =P

The amount of times X3: Terran Conflict has been redownloading in entirety thanks to this Steam bug has my internet cap buckling at the knees.

Why you Australians put up with such shitty internet options and capped service i'll never know. You guys should all riot for better service and providers or something. I'd back you guys 100%.

The sad truth of the matter is that we'll always be fucked for that, data is charged for every time it passes through a router not owned by your ISP and the big costs are on the intercontinental cables. In america & europe its not as bad since so much of the data is stored there but the vast majority of our data comes from offshore meaning lots of data down the big pipes which means a lot of money

No Satellite?

Satellite would be worse, its got very limited windows of use and its more costly because of it. Cable will aways beat wireless

Bah if it'd unlimited downloads that'd make it slightly better. Or maybe at least get more companies so more competition and cheaper prices? Fuck they could at least remove the caps or heighten them.

They've already stated they're replacing the old system with a new one so this shouldn't happen anymore. It should be out soon.

I also had a few games prompt for redownload today. First time ever for me far as I've been able to tell but they were strangely paused even though I wasn't playing a game. On resume they seemed to go back to noticing I had my stuff and just do the patch but it was kind of freaky. I can handle the download and probably wouldn't even notice if I was doing other stuff but I can see how for some connections it'd be a pain.