Is there any way of stopping updates?

[Blackadder V]

Steam updates the game as soon as it can and it refuses to accept my "do not automatically update the game" setting.

I can no longer play my Tuscany game and I am guessing it is because the 1.5 update is not game save compatible. Is it the case that any patch/update which is released and is not game save compatible will stop your games dead? If so then that is harsh if you have put dozens of hours into a game, luckily I only put a few hours into this one.

I was hoping that the "do not automatically update the game" setting would mean I had to update through the launcher which would of course be my choice in timing but this is not the case. I am reluctant to restart my game in case it happens again a couple of hundred years down the line.

How can I stop steam updating? It is not an issue with most games but it is with paradox games.

 

[delpiero1234]

You can disable autoupdate in the Steam settings : )

However, you can only play Ironman mode with the latest patch.

 

[Tom013]

Steam updates the game as soon as it can and it refuses to accept my "do not automatically update the game" setting.

I can no longer play my Tuscany game and I am guessing it is because the 1.5 update is not game save compatible. Is it the case that any patch/update which is released and is not game save compatible will stop your games dead? If so then that is harsh if you have put dozens of hours into a game, luckily I only put a few hours into this one.

I was hoping that the "do not automatically update the game" setting would mean I had to update through the launcher which would of course be my choice in timing but this is not the case. I am reluctant to restart my game in case it happens again a couple of hundred years down the line.

How can I stop steam updating? It is not an issue with most games but it is with paradox games.

Well, first off, no patches are known to be save incompatible, so that's sort of unlucky for you. There are typically quirks, but they SHOULD still be playable unless otherwise noted (no EU4 patches have been so noted thus far...).

"Do not automatically update" is Steam's poor phrasing of: "Do not update while I am idle on Steam but go ahead and do it if I choose to play that game." There is, alas, no way to tell Steam to "never ever update this game." It's a "feature" of Steam, which is usually fine but can be a pain.

That said, there are a number of ways around the update issue that all sprout from the fact that EU4 does not require Steam for offline play. The easiest is just check that "no automatic updates" box and then put Steam in offline mode before you play. It won't update as long as you are in offline mode. You can also launch the game from the install directory. It will never update if you do this. Finally, because everything necessary for the game is in that directory, you can copy your whole directory as a "backup" of a version and keep it forever, frozen in time when you copied the folder.

 

[LarryLeica]

Steam will always update, the do not update option is to not update while you are playing the game as has been stated... The only way to keep a copy is to make a copy of the EU4 folder somewhere, or make sure you use one of the old versions via the Beta tab in steam properties.

 

[zedyue]

If you don't mind having inaccurate steam stats, just never launch steam and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Europa Universalis IV and launch eu4_launch.exe

File path may be slightly different depending on your system.

 

[echolot]

As far as I know the only way would be never run or uninstall Steam.

 

[delpiero1234]

I think you can disable automatic updates in the steam settings.

 

[AndrewT]

I think you can disable automatic updates in the steam settings.

All that does is stop the update applying as soon as it's released. It still applies when you next run the game, there's no setting to stop that. As they've said above just don't run Steam, run it in offline mode, or make a copy of the game elsewhere and run that.