"Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a 97.7GB download on PC"

[Andromeda Stardust]

As a kid I remember 3kb a second being the norm on a 56k modem. At least where I lived was.

That Middle Earth download would take a day and a half on my connection.

 

Our suburban ATT Uverse DSL is capped at 6Mbit downlink but that's due to the shitty twisted pair analog phone lines that was buried in the ground back in the 60s and is in dire need of replacement. They tried giving us a free upgrade to 21Mbit and the router crapped out. Sucks that the exchange server is a half mile away the way the crow flies (technically 7700 feet of cable according to the DSL installer) and other people in my city (such as my apartment dwelling fiance) enjoy paying basically the same amount for 50Mbits...

 

Oh well, it's good enough to stream HD at 720p. The unfortunate part is that our uplink is only 500kbits, so whenever I need to upload a ten minute video to youtube, it usually means six hours or more wait time...

[Austin]

I think this is an unfortunate trend. A large part of the problem is the awful broadband situation in the United States with slow speeds and unnecessary bandwidth caps. Even users like myself in "good" internet markets are starting to having to worry about caps and overcharges thanks to higher quality streaming content and larger game downloads/updates. Something needs to change.

[Blazing Lazers]

I can't help but think that huge game sizes are part of an attempt to reduce piracy in some small way by making it much more difficult to download "free" copies. Heck, a huge part of the file sizes of newer PC (and console) games are uncompressed audio and textures that surely could be compressed in many cases to make for an easier download.

[djour]

This thread is giving me a flashback or downloading music on dial-up and having someone call me just as I was about to finish getting a song. Happened all the time and I would have to re-start the download all over again.