Anyone who’s ever played an online game will know that your biggest enemy is never another player; it’s lag.
Lag can make or break online play.
There’s nothing more infuriating than when I’m trying to enjoy a couple of rounds of Fortnite with my pals and I see those pesky red warning arrows pop up.
Before you know it, you’ve been eliminated before you’re even aware there’s an enemy player to shoot, or you may find yourself having disconnected entirely.
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Of course, there’s no way we can ever truly cancel out lag.
Lag is caused by a drop in connection and those connections are largely determined by the quality of the broadband in our homes.
That being said, Steam does boast a simple setting that can at least limit some of the lag you may often experience on PC.
Steam Users Can Limit Download Speeds to Limit Lag
If our internet connection drops, there’s little we can do as gamers, but we can ensure we don’t put too much pressure on said connection.
While we’re gaming, more often than not, game updates will land, draining resources away from the connection that’s fuelling our online play.
You could, of course, limit all downloads whilst you're gaming online but admittedly, that isn’t always very practical so instead, you’re going to want to limit your download speeds.
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To do this, begin by venturing over to Steam’s settings page.
From here, navigate towards downloads and then find ‘Limit Download Speed’.
You’ll then be granted the opportunity to select your preferred speed in kilobits per second, or Kbps.
I won’t tell you what speed to set as that depends on several factors, the main one being the quality and capabilities of your broadband connection.
A quick online search though should help you narrow down the setting that’s right for your personal circumstances.
If you do want to turn off all downloads, there is a handy toggle called ‘Allow Downloads During Gameplay’ that you can set to off; they’ll then only resume when your device is on with no game loaded.
You can adjust this on a ‘per game’ basis too. If you’re playing an offline title, that’s a game you’re more likely going to want to allow downloads during.
There’s also the ‘Throttle Downloads While Streaming’ option.
Setting this to ‘on’ allows Steam itself to help limit download speeds to ensure a smoother connection.
These adjustments, as I said, won’t solve all of your woes, but they should help a fair bit.