Preloading...what's the point?

[Jarhead0331]

Seems every time I pre-load a game on steam, at release, I still have to wait anywhere from 10 to 40 minutes before it is ready to play.  I'm not sure what exactly the game is doing during this time, but it seems to be a fairly consistent issue for me.  Anyone else get this?  Right now, there is a little window pop-up telling me that Sniper Elite 3 is updating and won't be ready to play for another hour and 4 minutes.  WTF?

[FlickJax]

It is rather annoying; however I only tend to get 4mb download speed so preload still shortens the wait for me.

[Grim.Reaper]

I did not have that issue today when I played sniper, played immediately.  However I always leave my computer on so maybe it auto updated overnight.

[Nefaro]

Release Day patches that have updated so many files.  Either that.. or the developers don't bother tracking which files have been updated and just re-release whole swaths of folders. 

There is at least one dev team, and probably more, who just hamfist huge updates into their Steam games.  I recall War of the Roses being one of those where you would get 2 to 6 GB patches every time they updated with a few bug fixes, for example.  I'd sometimes get those only days apart.  ::)

[tgb]

Waiting 10-40 minutes is still preferable to waiting 4-6 house.  Also it keeps the Steam servers from getting overloaded and crashing when there's a big release.