It depends on the game as online only games that require everyone playing together to be on same game version you cannot skip.

Otherwise see if the game lets you play it with older game versions and rollback to that as there are various methods to do that or see if the game lets you use a separate launcher if it's a game mod issue as a lot of games do that.

Remember that steam became so popular because it made keeping your games updated far easier then it used to be as before it used to be a huge hassle and if you want to bypass this it falls on you to find a solution.

Unfortunately Steam doesn't directly support you controlling your game's version.

You can accomplish version control only through a "hacky" method (I didn't test this so please confirm to others if it works or not)

Right-click the game in your Library -> Properties -> Updates,
Under Automatic Updates, change it to: "Wait until I launch the game".

Then learn how to disable your Steam client's internet connection, this is done either by adding a firewall rule to close inbound and outbound connections or straight up just shutting down the internet on your PC.

Do these steps carefully to avoid accidentally updating the game.

Hope this helps!

You did have a thread in the No Man's Sky game hub.

Originally posted by Vurado88:

Is there a way to play game with out forcefull update that takes 10-20GB ?

As the others said, depends on the game.. Sometimes you can avoid all this by changing the update method to "Only when I start the game", and then use another launcher (like a modloader or such) to start the actual game. Doesn't work all the time, but does miracles for classics like Skyrim.

Originally posted by Vurado88:

Is there a way to play game with out forcefull update that takes 10-20GB ?
I cancel update download restated steam, lunched the game again and again force 20GB update started

Buy on GoG.

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

You did have a thread in the No Man's Sky game hub.

:nkCool:

That game is pretty bad with putting so many assets into so few archive files; if they need to tweak the slightest thing, boom, multi-gig download.

Their patching "policy" isn't helpful with that either; they come "out of the blue" with their content updates, on both stable and experimental, with seemingly very limited testing. Thus prompting a hastened stream of hotfixes. Only difference between stable and experimental branches is that things slow down on stable first.

With all that mess, and how Steam's download management/UI are, I just uninstall that game every time I stop playing it, and reinstall only when I plan on playing some more. Might sound game specific, but I'd be surprised if it was just Hello Games that was this form of "obnoxious" about patches.

Steam Download-Servers can be blocked individually by hosts. But it's a lot.

However, the core problem is that the update messages (product/game title in blue with the message Update available/pending) still appear and then the respective product can't be used as long as no update has been installed. The API must be disabled for this, but then the client would no longer work.

The same can be applied to the forced loading and updating of countless unoptimized product images, teasers and other graphics which (depending on the library size), mess up the hard disk with gigabytes of junk data. Not to mention the traffic it generates...

Well, it's a general consumer-unfriendly and resource-wasting model. Usability and Steam are two different worlds. We have to deal with it for now.

A maybe option - if a game is installed, make a copy the respective folder and start the related product from there. Should remain untouched. This only works until files are matched with hashes on the server side.

There is so much wrong in this whole thread... I can't stop facepalming...

First of all, NO you can't disable updates for online only games. That's what they are at their core, games that evolve over time and require that you stay up to date to continue playing. You simply cannot play without the latest update, period. Since OP seem to be talking about No Man's Sky then it immediately become facepalm worthy.

Second; as it has been mentioned already some games installation scheme are pretty bad. It is case by case for every game but sometimes the devs take the lazy approach and bundle a bunch of stuff into the same game files. When you download a change, even if it is tiny in size, Steam has to unpack everything for the given file, make the change and then pack it up again. Think the same kind of method than an archive system like .zip but with package files for games instead. So in this instance you would NOT be downloading 10-20 gigs but the installation sequence would need to work around with that amount of data to bring everything up to speed. This "problem" is not a Steam problem at all and you would need to contact the game developer to share your annoyance with this system so they can think about fixing it. Best example that come to mind of a game which used to update all the time with this kind of ridiculous install scheme is Dead by Daylight. Installation scheme that they fixed a while ago, BTW. It is way better now.

Third; you can easily change the options as a per game basis about when you want the games to update or if you want it to automatically update at all. In fact this was such a requested feature that Steam introduced this as a general rule not so long ago. All you have to do is set the general rule to "only download the game when I start it" (or change the rule per game basis) and the games are not going to update anymore... Until you start it the next time you want to play. This is a must for people who need to ration their internet usage TBH.

Fourth; coupled with #3, if you know you want to stay on a previous patch then simply never update that given game and launch Steam in offline mode. Steam can't bother you with updates if it can't connect to the servers and thus you'll be able to keep using that version indefinitely (or more realistically, until you update the game again).

If for some reason you fail to keep your game to whatever version then there is a way to use Steam console to download specific versions and effectively do a rollback. That's a far more advanced move however and this post is already long enough as it is. But that option still exist.

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