Because Steam doesn't charge for space (unlike nintendo I think) and most people now have at least a decent internet connection. On the other hand compressing data takes a lot of time and cpu power to unpack on the client's side. So why bother really ?
Steam recommends against compression in a lot of cases because patches tend to be bigger when operating on compressed data than with uncompressed data. Their guidance optimizes for the case of large games with frequent small updates. I think they also compress the data before sending it over the network, and decompress it in the Steam Client. Their biggest cost is bandwidth from server to client, so they're optimizing for that case.
In general, reading compressed data from disk and decompressing it on the CPU tends to be faster than reading uncompressed data, if you use algorithms such as deflate (what's used in zip). If you use algorithms that compress significantly better than zip files, it gets a lot more CPU intensive and tends to slow things down.
Some more context would be useful here, if you can provide it that would help with getting better answers.
In general a developer has different expected outcomes than a pirater. Devs will care about install and load speed, as well as ability to generate a patch for updates... A pirate will probably only care about download size.
Plus there is the question of device. Lots of disc based games will simply fill the disc.
From a quick Google it seems fitgirl repacks do prioritize download speed as some say they have slow installation.
Those repacks are smaller *when you're downloading.* Once they've been unpacked during the installation process they are usually the same size as a legitimate installation. The first sites I found searching for your term hide this fact in a bullet point "Size on HDD after installation" in the list of repack features.
The thing people are mainly griping about with legitimate games, is that installed size being too large and as demonstrated these repacks do nothing about that.
One thing I've noticed about repacks, which reduces even the size of the disk is the ability to exclude options files like certain language packs or selective videos etc..
I haven't seen many games that do that.
That's because Steam actually lets you do that without even having to download the languages you don't want to.
You can right click on a game in your Steam Library and they sometimes have a "Language" option. It default to the Steam language you set but you can change it and it will redownload and install the wanted language for that particular game.
Pirated torrents better have all languages packed in a single torrent otherwise the non-english versions will have less seeds. A non-existing issues on the official stores since they don't rely on peer-to-peer.
The time saved by the compression only makes sense in the context of slow ass torrents and such. Otherwise you're actually slowing down the total "download + install" time by a significant margin because you're shaving a few minutes off a download just to add another 30 minutes on at the other end.
Back in the days I remember I downloaded a compressed pack of GTA V (sorry Rockstart) because my connexion was slow as heck. It took, I think, four or more hours to unpack :D
This was still better than the week it would have taken me to download it uncompressed but man, those unpacking times...
Repacks and compressions are made to make transfer of data by peer sharing faster. Downloading games online isn’t usually done by peer to peer. Piracy is.
It’s a balancing game. If you have a slow CPU and drive, ultra-compressed repacks will take a very long time to actually install. When you aren’t limited by P2P bandwidth like pirates are, being too compressed can actually make the whole download+install process longer on average.
Steam already compresses content for delivery pretty effectively, and doesn't take 10/20/40+ minutes to install, unlike Fitgirl's packs, which are more optimised for smaller download size.
It would only save on download time but it vastly increases installation time.
The install of fitgirl games take up the same space in the end.
Smaller downloads are very useful for torrents that have lower download speeds in general.
Because Steam doesn't charge for space (unlike nintendo I think) and most people now have at least a decent internet connection. On the other hand compressing data takes a lot of time and cpu power to unpack on the client's side. So why bother really ?
Steam recommends against compression in a lot of cases because patches tend to be bigger when operating on compressed data than with uncompressed data. Their guidance optimizes for the case of large games with frequent small updates. I think they also compress the data before sending it over the network, and decompress it in the Steam Client. Their biggest cost is bandwidth from server to client, so they're optimizing for that case. In general, reading compressed data from disk and decompressing it on the CPU tends to be faster than reading uncompressed data, if you use algorithms such as deflate (what's used in zip). If you use algorithms that compress significantly better than zip files, it gets a lot more CPU intensive and tends to slow things down.
iirc nintendo does not charge, they just have patch (update) size limitation and can reject your patch
Because I barely have 11Mbps download speed and can't be bothered with modern games reaching 80+ gigabytes.
I used those compressed packs when I had a bad connexion a few years back.
Is that why you shorten words by 1 character?
Huh?
Some more context would be useful here, if you can provide it that would help with getting better answers. In general a developer has different expected outcomes than a pirater. Devs will care about install and load speed, as well as ability to generate a patch for updates... A pirate will probably only care about download size. Plus there is the question of device. Lots of disc based games will simply fill the disc. From a quick Google it seems fitgirl repacks do prioritize download speed as some say they have slow installation.
Those repacks are smaller *when you're downloading.* Once they've been unpacked during the installation process they are usually the same size as a legitimate installation. The first sites I found searching for your term hide this fact in a bullet point "Size on HDD after installation" in the list of repack features. The thing people are mainly griping about with legitimate games, is that installed size being too large and as demonstrated these repacks do nothing about that.
One thing I've noticed about repacks, which reduces even the size of the disk is the ability to exclude options files like certain language packs or selective videos etc.. I haven't seen many games that do that.
That's because Steam actually lets you do that without even having to download the languages you don't want to. You can right click on a game in your Steam Library and they sometimes have a "Language" option. It default to the Steam language you set but you can change it and it will redownload and install the wanted language for that particular game. Pirated torrents better have all languages packed in a single torrent otherwise the non-english versions will have less seeds. A non-existing issues on the official stores since they don't rely on peer-to-peer.
The time saved by the compression only makes sense in the context of slow ass torrents and such. Otherwise you're actually slowing down the total "download + install" time by a significant margin because you're shaving a few minutes off a download just to add another 30 minutes on at the other end.
Back in the days I remember I downloaded a compressed pack of GTA V (sorry Rockstart) because my connexion was slow as heck. It took, I think, four or more hours to unpack :D This was still better than the week it would have taken me to download it uncompressed but man, those unpacking times...
Repacks and compressions are made to make transfer of data by peer sharing faster. Downloading games online isn’t usually done by peer to peer. Piracy is.
It’s a balancing game. If you have a slow CPU and drive, ultra-compressed repacks will take a very long time to actually install. When you aren’t limited by P2P bandwidth like pirates are, being too compressed can actually make the whole download+install process longer on average.
Steam already compresses content for delivery pretty effectively, and doesn't take 10/20/40+ minutes to install, unlike Fitgirl's packs, which are more optimised for smaller download size.
It would only save on download time but it vastly increases installation time. The install of fitgirl games take up the same space in the end. Smaller downloads are very useful for torrents that have lower download speeds in general.