Steam Rate Minder

Steam is a content delivery and management tool from Valve Software. Steam has a rate throttle (Steam Rate) that needs to be set to your typical internet download speed setting. Steam based games also have a rate setting that is not the same as the Steam Rate (but similar in intent).

Unfortunately, it turns out that changing your rate in the game will also cause the Steam Rate setting to be changed which can cause a variety of symptoms.

Each game has it's own rate setting and Steam has it's own, but for some bizarre reason Valve chose to programmatically link the game rate back to the Steam rate, so if you set your in-game "rate" to some high number, say 20000 or 30000 (30000 is equivalent to 10MBit download rates) then this also will change the Steam download rate to the same number.

You can see the Steam Rate settings in the Steam settings: steam > settings > downloads > speed of your internet

The game rate behaves very differently from the Steam Rate, I find I need 20000 or 30000 in source games to minimize choke but then my Steam Server Browser gets all messed up and I do see some "extreme" symptoms (the reason I started working on this little application). Servers can also slow-hack your rate settings and cause this.

This is mostly a problem when you have a slower DSL or cable connection, 512 or 768, but getting it set to 10Mbit is likely to mess up almost anyone somewhat unless you have a fiber optic connection.

The Rate change doesn't actually affect Steam right away, Steam becomes affected the next time it restarts.

Various symptoms you might see with an incorrect Steam rate setting are: 1. very slow server listings in the server browser 2. fewer then expected servers showing up in the steam browser 3. getting disconnected for a variety of reasons about 1 minute after connecting to a server 4. getting disconnected (listen server or regular server with the odd message: Disconnect: Client version incompatible with server.

Sometimes after a major Steam update or game update, the Steam Rate setting gets changed to some default (which may be quite wrong for your network).

The only solution until now is to make sure your in-game rate is set to the same setting as your Steam rate setting, but this may give you a poor gaming experience. The Steam Rate Minder application was developed to be a small tool that can resolve this problem for now. Hopefully Valve will eventually unlink the rates and it won't be a problem anymore.

- Set your proper Steam Rate in Steam settings, then run the app and select lock rate and it will hold your preferred Steam Rate at that speed regardless of what your game rate settings are.  - You can minimize the app into the tool tray and leave it running, mouse hover over the icon to tell you the current rate.