this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Note plenty FitGirl repacks are lossless; as in, she isn't taking less important files out of the game, she's compressing it better. 90GB→35GB seems accurate; you often see ~1/3 of the original size, like this. And it shows plenty game devs
And then those same developers get amazed at the fact FitGirl is so popular. "Maybe we're doing something wrong? ...nah."
The downside of the compression is the install can take way longer than the download. But if you're on a slower connection the smaller download would be a big benefit.
The EA/Ubisoft/Rockstar servers are so shit and their games so large that it's actually near impossible to download their games on a slow internet connection, because they would just timeout after 3~4 hours.
Downloading a cracked, compressed FitGirl repack over P2P and just ignoring the crack was unironically the only viable way to legally enjoy the games I had purchased back when I had slow internet.
The repacks are windows .exes, yet even work flawlessly via wine. FitGirl truly GOATed.
A lot of devs stopped giving a flying fuck to disk space and performance a long time ago. "32GB of RAM and 500GB of disk space? Don't mind if I do!" - for a pixel art 2D platformer
It's so infuriating I've either got 3 brand new games or 30 older games installed on to my device.
Even mobile gaming is getting out of hand
I wouldn't really say that. The kind of extreme compression Fitgirl does comes with the tradeoff of really long decompression times. Depending on which games, nearly 45 minutes (with a 7800x3D)
Some games lack compression but I would not want those long install times by default, if you have a speedy internet connection they usually take longer to install than to download. Don't get me wrong, for people with really slow internet those repacks are a godsend but they are not "better" on every aspect.
Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.
Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn't want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.
It will also use ALL your bandwidth by default. I can't even watch a yt video or anything while doing a steam download unless I limit the bandwidth in settings.
What kind of router do you have? If it has any kind of "smart queue" or "smart qos" you could try enabling that and it will de-prioritize steam's packets (as needed) so that web browsing and voip still work.
Awesome thank you for the tip. I'm not too well versed in networking so I never really dig around in my router settings. I'm just using the Modem/router supplied by the ISP right now and it doesn't look like it has anything like that from a quick look through the config page.
Ahh yeah the provided router might not have some of the more advanced features. But suffice to say this isn't so much a steam problem as it is a "how computer networks work" problem. The way routers work by default tends to penalize "bursty" traffic like loading websites/gaming/voice and prioritize sustained traffic like your download, so it's nice that valve provide the option to limit the bandwidth. I'm on satellite internet right now waiting for verizon to finish their fiber install and I can't even use that reliably because my bandwidth changes constantly D=
More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.
Yeah I think it ends up waiting for slower storage if your cpu or HDD are too slow. I experience that with slower sdcards on the Deck.
But on a decent NVMe with a balanced CPU the download and disk are full bore and the CPU usage goes really high.
Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn't by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I'm being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.
I hope you aren't literally still using an actual HDD.
Not for games, usually, but it still has its uses, so why not
Is this why steam is so insanely slow to download games.
It can be, spinning iron has pretty bad throughput.
Could be a variety of things but yes. It also depends on the game and how compressible it's assets are.
Honestly I can't remember the last time a fitgirl release took longer to install than an 'official' copy.
And pretty much as long as I've had a computer it's been "bottom of the barrel" hardware.
I've installed one game from FitGirl so far. It took three hours to unpack while hammering all the cpu cores, failed, and required another three-hour go to install properly.
So you're saying that all games should install like this?
You're meant to check the CRCs before you extract to verify that you actually fully downloaded the file. Otherwise yes, people like myself will mock you online for this trivial anecdote
Oh really? How come it installed fine the second time from the same file?
It's well-known that installation of FitGirl's repacks can fail, and the recommendation is exactly that one don't touch the computer while it's going on, and retry again if it fails. Mock yourself for not knowing this, as this very thread contains more ‘anecdotes’ about the same.
It's some kinda super wonky compression that gives extreme space savings but is so fragile that the result isn't guaranteed, which is precisely why it isn't widely used.
alright
Great rejoinder there. "I didn't research how stuff works, but I have an irrelevant rebuttal, and when people point out that it's not how stuff works, I will reply 'alright', that will really put them in their place."
(Sorry, I just wanted to come back and say my response wasn't very friendly or constructive but I think took issue with your (perceived) tone mostly.)
I have had your issue once before in the past, but I genuinely don't think it is such a pain point that it's a frequent issue to prevent further use.
I can imagine from a consumer point of view that there will always be faster way to pack data so that people can start playing instantly and leave the problem of storage to online game libraries. But from an archivist point of view I genuinely believe that the format she has chosen for those of us who want to replay a game every now and then and can suffer the hour long unpack is efficient for the storage/playing tradeoff
I don't have statistics, but:
I myself didn't do any research specifically on this matter, and only learned of these problems through osmosis by randomly reading various threads on Reddit's r/all
I installed one single game from a repack by FitGirl
my experience right away exactly mirrored that of which I've read previously
I don't have problems with FitGirl using this compression, in fact I find it fascinating that such an algorithm exists. However, it obviously doesn't meet standards to which a commercial publisher or storefront are held.
Given other people addressed the same point, but unlike you they aren't disingenuously assuming words into my mouth, I think it's pretty safe to block you as dead weight.
Wow, very mature.
“Developers should do compression like FitGirl does.”
“Oh no I didn't mean developers should do compression like FitGirl does.”
It's more likely that the devs are not being given the time or resources to do this kind of thing properly. Their bosses are too concerned with what will save money and generate shareholder value.
It's basic math for these executives, the cost of bandwidth is magnitudes less than than the cost to pay someone to reduce it. They do not care about the cost to gamers.
absolutely this.
Fair point. I guess it would be more accurate to say "development studios" (you know, the organisation... including the bloody boss) instead of "game devs".
This implies fitgirl is doing it properly. Which it's trade off faster download longer install times or vice versa.
Decompression during install is generally less of a bottleneck than network bandwidth, so fitgirl is doing it properly.
The thing about compression is you have to process it to decompress it. It may be benificial to people with limited bandwidth, or for peer-to-peer sharing, but it's probably better for most users for someone like Valve to share the uncompressed version. Bandwidth isn't the issue it used to be.
It also makes progressive updates harder. The best you can do is compress each update individually, not the whole package.
I'm aware that compression rates are a trade-off between space and processing time, and that there's some balance to be had. However, I don't see this balance from plenty commercial games; what I see instead is disregard.
Here's a made up example. Suppose you have a choice between compressing a game:
FitGirl will consistently pick the later option. And it would be fine if devs picked the former, or a middle ground... but they don't. Instead, often you get a 10 GiB file that takes 10 min to unpack, the worst of both worlds.
And it isn't just a matter of the compression algorithm. The developers also have the freedom to choose how they split files; but they often create 9001 files the size of an ant, that is going to hurt decompression times. (Paradox Interactive, I'm looking at you.)
Tagging @fiestorra@discuss.tchncs.de, as it addresses what they said too.
The download size difference of 7 GiB only costs me another 60-80s to download as long as the Steam servers are serving well. So funny enough the first option would be better for me.
I don't know any that take a long time to unpack from developers. They do have to pre-compile shaders, but that's different. Maybe I just don't pay enough attention, or maybe it's just because I don't play many big budget games.
From the top of my mind, Europa Universalis 4. Even the base game takes ages to install, and I don't think it's just the Linux version.
Incidentally, I checked it in FitGirl's site, found EU5 instead, and she's complaining about the exact same thing:
I did play EU5 (and 4 ages ago) and didn't notice the issue. I guess I just don't pay attention to it.
I did because my older computer was a potato, so it was kind of obvious the game took a bit too long to install.
No it's making a choice. Faster decompress times. Considering a lot of their customers have fast speeds it doesn't really matter.
Bingo. And this means they're effectively choosing who their games are for. And then complaining the ones they didn't choose decided to pirate it.
I'm curious, are there countries where fast internet is way too expensive but video games are priced well?
Edit: I mean priced well on launch, btw, not on sale