The same thing, 1.9GB CS2 updates every reboot.
EDIT: i mean not the game update, but the shader cache update

damn it's happening even after quitting the game

I set them all to update on launch so at least all my games aren't updating every boot. Seems to be at least a 2 year old problem.

I also have this, on desktop and Steam Deck. Nearly every day there's almost 200 updates. Assuming shader cache?

not a fix but i tried the steam flatpak version for few days. It works flawlessly imo

ok until yesterday that was amazing but now i got this bug again even in flatpak

Same problem. Up to 1GB+ updates every day. Sometimes even after every restart of the steam client.

day 4 of redownloading every game updates everydays

I set them all to update on launch so at least all my games aren't updating every boot. Seems to be at least a 2 year old problem.

The issue was fixed for a while but has returned.

Experiencing the same issue, 5.8/5.9GB update for Warframe and other games, Ghostrunner 1&2, Titanfall 2 , etc. every time. Pretty much on every steam restart without updating my system or anything else.

My details:

OS: EndeavourOS Linux x86_64
Kernel: 6.6.10-zen1-1-zen
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1705108172
Steam Client Build Date: Fri, Jan 12 7:52 PM UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date: Fri, Jan 12 12:02 PM UTC -08:00
Steam API Version: SteamClient021

Steam is one a single drive along with my OS which is ext4. I do have a second drive connected but it's usually if not always unmounted.

Happening to me too. Maybe because 2nd added steam library is on exFat partition with its respective compatdata and shader folder?
I know proton doesn't like exFat due to symlinks missing, so I have that on main / steam lib on ext4

Shouldn't be that, because I'm on one typical (but BTRFS) setup of / and /home, with all games in /home/<username>. I'm running into this same issue.

everyday everyday.... devs, how can we help you fixing this ?

I have a separate issue (at least, separate as far as I know) that causes games to validate every day as well. These issues both being present compounds the difficulty.

It seems that pausing the download when u first launch steam then clear all the downloads fixes this issue for me but only if i don't restart steam.
It is also a good way to figure out if its an actual game content/patch download and not a steam pre cache update. Because if it was really a patch for a game then it will show up as scheduled for download after you cleared all your downloads.
Maybe making a fix around this should solve this problem.

That doesn't work for me. Every time I quit the game or restart steam, it re-downloads shaders (for some games in particular).

At the moment I have 9 games installed, three of them are linux native games (X4:Foundations, Factorio and Dwarf Fortress)
I need to download it every day for about half the games, but the biggies are:
Linux-native: X4F (~500MB),
Proton games: Baldur's Gate 3 (~450MB) and Enshrouded (8 GigaByte)
steam-logs.tar.gz

Never saw this as an issue. But now i installed Enshrouded and get a 8GB shader-cache update every time i start steam or exit the game. 8GB. That also take ages processing when i want to start the game. Is there any workaround other than disabling shader pre-caching for all games?

@sophie-kuehn pausing and clearing the downloads makes this shader cache update go away as long as i don't restart steam.
This is the only way i have found until valve figure it out.

@H3r4cles This is not a solution for me as i restart the computer daily. What is my temporary solution now is to set an auto update time window between 5 and 6 in the morning when the pc is never running. And therefore prevent all updates without removing the shader cache. I now have to trigger all updates manually i suppose.

The daily download is back I can confirm. I didn't find the old thread so I reply in this newer one.

//EDIT: here https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/8076

The same happens on Steam Deck (game and desktop modes). At lesast on Preview and Main channels.

Are these game updates, shader updates or workshop content? You can put your mouse over the "i" symbol next to the currently downloading app, and it'll show what it's downloading. I also sometimes get empty downloads, for which Steam doesn't show any info, including sizes, patchnotes or the "i" symbol.

Are these game updates, shader updates or workshop content? You can put your mouse over the "i" symbol next to the currently downloading app, and it'll show what it's downloading. I also sometimes get empty downloads, for which Steam doesn't show any info, including sizes, patchnotes or the "i" symbol.

These are shader updates. Sometimes pared with content updates.

I had to disable shader caching for this to stop, at first i thought it was game updates because steam isn't clear on what it's actually downloading.

Happens everyday for Steam + Linux, ~1GB DOTA update after each restart.

The worst to troubleshoot is that it is not consistent. You start Steam it downloads shader cache update for a dozen game, totaling 1GB+ download. You REBOOT the system, your start Steam, it does the same again. You reboot again, it does the same, you reboot again, it does not download anything. There is no logic at all.

I'm on Steam BETA but it does the same on Steam non beta currently.

This is still happening almost every reboot like the comment above says. It will download the entire shader cache, then redownload it 5 min later after a restart. Is there any logs or anything that can be provided to help elevate or diagnose this?

That's been an issue for months now ... still no fixes?
Apparently download traffic so too cheap now :-P

If only it was 50MB per games, but I have this 2.7GB Rocket League shader cache update every time almost, this is getting old, I only have 10Mb DSL internet, it takes hours to finish it all, and if I need to reboot for whatever reason, I'm up for another round of download...

I can confirm this is an issue. Warframe downloads 7.3GB of Shader pre-cache data after every steam/PC reboot. This has to be fixed!
System: Manjaro with AMD GPU and CPU

@DimitarSamarov07

That game is what made me disable the pre-caching feature entirely. And you know what? I have not noticed one bit of difference to ingame performance after doing so (on my Steam Deck).

@ValveSoftware Hi, any update/responce?
Tell us what logs/system reports to send you for debugging. Yesterday i downloaded some gigas of waste, today here is the screenshot:

Please.

Still happening, every day.

Is Valve actually monitoring this channel? The lack of official feedback is unsettling.

I guess if we were asked "provide this info, this info, describe this or that" it would speed up the process, I could give random info/log but I don't know what is needed to troubleshoot the issue on Valve's end.

This must be quite easy to replicate.
I use steam native with nothing fancy stuff going on. I have a second games library pointing to my ntfs drive. I have symlinks for the compatdata and shader folders, that's the only "special" thing I have.

Hi there!
Any updates on this ?

I'm getting tired of this, every time, when I quite game, it has to validate.
Only and only in few cases it'll get less than 1GB, in the other cases, I've to get more than 1GB, in case I quite the game.

I haveing this problem mainly on Valv's games like CS2, it very annoying for me i need to download 2GB of shader and still need to compile it on my own to do not feel any lag, it would be better to be able to turn off background shader cache off for specific games until this issue get fixed.also i need background shader cache for specific games like SOT and Halo infinite and turn it on and off while switching games is also wasting Traffic.

Same 10.9GB with Enshrouded. pausing and cancelling fixes until steam or PC is rebooted. Other games have this as well but they are small MB vs this one large download each time. I am using btrfs on main drive and added a second btrfs 3TB HDD for games that don't require SSD speeds. I honestly do not remember if this was happening before adding the 2nd drive.

I experience this with Warframe all the time on two separate Arch Linux installs. Every time Steam starts up, Warframe triggers a 7.6 GB cache download. I also get the same general behavior (usually with a 1-400 MB download) from every other installed game in my library.

I also think Steam needs a cache management interface (similar to the "Storage" page in settings) that would allow users to see how big each game's cache is and provide an option to disable and/or delete each individual game cache.

it says "Enabling this feature may slightly increase disk and bandwidth usage."
my question: Are you insane?

CS2 had a 2GB update each time is tarted steam or the game crashed. others report of 10 GB updates. imagine 100.000 thousands of users downloading for no reason. This has not been resolved.
This is actually a lot of unnecessary disk (write cycle) and bandwidth usage that is not necessary. why are shaders even downloading and pre-caching for games i am not currently playing and that have received no (0) map updates or updates otherwise at all? why?

it says "Enabling this feature may slightly increase disk and bandwidth usage."
my question: Are you insane?

This is true, when the feature works as intended, it is obviously not intended to re-download the whole shader cache every time.

I have this issue as well in arch on Endeavour OS. Same as voorhees3388. My shaders cache for Enshrouded keeps downloading over and over the 10GB of the cache when I restart steam. It happens for other games as well. I don't mind a few megabytes of caching but when it goes over the gigabyte...

I got a 13GB shader cache update for AHIT today, immediately stopped it, switched the game to Proton Experimental, cleared my steam download cache from steams download settings and restarted steam. Then I got the expected 146.5MB shader update...

I got a 13GB shader cache update for AHIT today, immediately stopped it, switched the game to Proton Experimental, cleared my steam download cache from steams download settings and restarted steam. Then I got the expected 146.5MB shader update...

My Enshrouded that was downloading ~10GB each reboot was on GE-Proton7-42. Switching to Proton Experimental and clearing steam download cache seems to have solved this and no longer downloads anything upon reboot.

I was going to try without clearing download cache but forgot, if anyone gets a chance I wonder if this is a necessary step.

what does proton have to do with it? large "shaders update" are present on Linux native games. CS2 is native and so are L4D, Half life 2, GarrysMod... some of them have a few 100 MB update but they are daily. why? then they re-download the updates when you restart steam or PC during the day and CS2 does it even after crash.

Afaik Proton don't has anything to do with this. And if it has, then only indirectly. The download of shader pre-cache files is a Steam application feature. That's why this topic is not in the Proton repository. I assume this has something to do with false positive checks for corrupted or missing files. But without the code being open sourced, we can only make assumptions.

Yeah, it's not the proton version. Opening steam for the first time today I got a 13.5GB shader cache update for AHIT again even though it was already set at Proton Experimental. For some reason though after stopping the update, clearing the download cache and restarting steam the whole giant update was gone like it never existed.

I hope this one gets picked up for a fix soon. The 40MB updates a few of the games get don't bother me, but the sometimes daily or more than once a day 2GB CS2 downloads followed by shader pre-caching is brutal.

Same thing happening with bunch of games on my machine, including BG3 (biggest one)

I hope this one gets picked up for a fix soon. The 40MB updates a few of the games get don't bother me, but the sometimes daily or more than once a day 2GB CS2 downloads followed by shader pre-caching is brutal.

i turned off shader precaching updates. wish this could be done per game title.
in any case the result for CS2 is slightly longer map load times (not by much). occasionally it can not load the map - specific shader is not loading (work around: exit game, load game, then map loads fast).

as for other games in my library i am not even sure why shaders are being downloaded, since there are no updates for them.

This has started happening to me this week. Starting Steam immediately validates 1.88 GB of CS2 very slowly despite this NVMe.

ZFS reports no READ/WRITE/CKSUM errors on this drive so I'm not sure what makes Steam do this.

@hatecode0110 are you planning to live so long?

I followed a suggestion on Steam Deck's subreddit. It was to set downloads on a schedule, like 5-6 AM. This way no more automatic cache are downloaded, only when you manually update or start a game.

It's not a solution, but while Valve decides if it will fix this some day (or century...), it helps.

Indeed there are workaround, but it doesn't fix the core issue. I'll ask again, what would you need @kisak-valve from us to help more to debug the situation?

Same happens to me as well, where Steam downloads "updates" for every single game I have installed. Every time I boot any game, I need to compile shaders again. Sometimes I quit a game, launch it later that day again and have to recompile shaders.

I also second the plea to please tell us what information is necessary to provide to debug and fix this.

I have exactly the same issue. CachyOS + Nvidia.

Same happens to me as well, where Steam downloads "updates" for every single game I have installed. Every time I boot any game, I need to compile shaders again. Sometimes I quit a game, launch it later that day again and have to recompile shaders.

I also second the plea to please tell us what information is necessary to provide to debug and fix this.

I'm having the same problem with the Vulkan It keeps updating every time I start Left 4 Dead 2

@drmmwlt (or someone who has enough permissions on this issue, @kisak-valve maybe?) could you please lock comments for this issue for now, as to allow people to still follow it without being spam?

I have been following these kinds of threads for a long time, because this has been happening for more than a year, both on Manjaro and on Arch, so this is def a steam thing.

What I have identified happening, that I could not find mentioned here in the thread is that yes, these are shaders, but they ONLY download, there is no writing to disk, since steam already has the shaders downloaded, you can even see this in the steam client because the disk activity is 0.

My guess is it "validates" by downloading ALL THE SHADERS in your entire library, then compares them to what you have in your steam folders, and if no change, no writing to disk.

What made me come to this conclusion?
Since steam does NOT redownload after closing and reopening the application, but it DOES after a reboot, I tend to believe steam puts the "daily downloads" somewhere on my system where it is only kept in memory or temp memory (swap).

PLEASE steam, fix this. There has to be a way to use for example a CRC check on the shaders instead of downloading the entire thing. Shaders in some games can be VERY big.
I have to "download" Gibibytes worth of data every reboot when starting steam.

Of course this is a Steam bug.

My guess is it "validates" by downloading ALL THE SHADERS in your entire library, then compares them to what you have cached, and if no change, no writing to disk.

That's not how it is supposed to work Bedna (Hi there :D) It is supposed to do checksum and/or versioning. I maybe will investigate on this write thing you're talking about though, maybe it can lead somewhere. In the past years they fixed this issue which was most backend issues if I recall correctly, they fixed things on the servers side, maybe it is still the same again.

On my side, I fixed it, because as yourself I had to re-download GBs of useless data everyday and I can't afford it with my 10Mb DSL:

This is a real shame, to not be able to benefit from a good feature. Also a shame nobody from Steam is actively involved in this issue here.

That's not how it is supposed to work Bedna (Hi there :D) It is supposed to do checksum and/or versioning. I maybe will investigate on this write thing you're talking about though, maybe it can lead somewhere. In the past years they fixed this issue which was most backend issues if I recall correctly, they fixed things on the servers side, maybe it is still the same again.

Hey buddy! :)

I should probably also add that my steam installation is on btrfs subvolume, separate home also on btrfs subvolume.
But my steam library is in ext4 on a partition/disk of its own, that might actually have unforeseen consequences since "Steam Common Redistributables" refuse to move from my steam folder on my home.
I honestly have not investigated WHERE the data goes, I just assumed it goes somewhere kept in memory since it only redownloads after reboot.

It is sad devs do not fix this, or even acknowledge the existence of the bug, but I also understand after reading this thread and many before them, that a dev might not want to intervene with comments.

This is supposed to be a bug report, not a discussion. xD (I say while half my post is me ranting) :heart:

Thank you Valve for throwing all that money into proton, without that we would most likely not even have this conversation, because there would not be any gaming on linux. xD

By actively involved I mean someone could ask for specific things to help debug the issue, some way of having hope this is looked at and worked on. We could throw all the logs we can gather but too much information is sometimes really too much to process. To be fair it is maybe just a very low priority issue as it doesn't break being able to play.

I should probably also add that my steam installation is on btrfs subvolume, separate home also on btrfs subvolume.
But my steam library is in ext4 on a partition/disk of its own, that might actually have unforeseen consequences since "Steam Common Redistributables" refuse to move from my steam folder on my home.

I have the same happening on my end, but everything is on the same btrfs partition but in multiple subvolumes, and it's also in flatpak. I originally though that this may be an issue of me sharing a library I had on my HDD raid0 across two different linux installs, but it might be just that the timing was right and the bug started to appear when I set that up. But it still happens to me. Quite annoying, but not as bad with a 100MBit connection.

Don't worry, this is neither btrfs, flatpak nor raid0 related (not saying you said that, just want to make it clear).
I use neither of them (Arch on single ext4 disk with Steam from Arch repo) and have the same issue.

I dug a tiny bit deeper, it DOES seem to write to disk after all.

Rebooted, started steam and used mmin with find and
...../SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/<app-id>/fozpipelinesv6/
seems to be used.

And browsing the files/directories in there seems to be a pretty nice mess with a ton of cache directories, multiple versions of .foz files everywhere with the same name, or just the same file with a number added to it, or at least nothing in there makes sense to me.

It's not fixed, my system uptime is 5 days and steam's been running for ~24h, during that time it's been downloading shaders for the same game twice. I'm going to have to turn shader downloads off because it takes like 30 minutes to process them and tbh I notice no difference in the game I'm playing anyway.

If you're gonna spam it doesn't work/works at least include your steam version...

I'm on steam beta 1716072097 and haven't come across this anymore for a week now.

Steam Beta Branch: Steam Beta Update
Steam Version: 1715979898
Steam Client Build Date: Fri, May 17 10:45 PM UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date: Thu, May 16 9:36 PM UTC -08:00

What version is in use is less relevant here since this has been going on for a LONG time.
If a patch were to be referenced to this bug, yes, the latest version would be required for testing.

It is still going on, but to a tiny bit less extent it seems.

BUT:
Yesterday I started playing V rising again after 1.0 release, and no shaders were available for my system so it compiled it for about 20minustes using 100% of all my 24 cpu cores (actually one core stayed around 50% so the computer was still usable). Game worked great and after closing it, it uploaded the whole thing to steam.
You are welcome steam community, I am happy to contribute. :)

What I DO NOT WANT after compiling for that long, is to be forced to DOWNLOAD MY OWN SHADERS (1.2GiB) after I rebooted and started steam again.
As usual, downloading gibibytes of data, but "writing to disk" stays at 0. :(

Mmm V rising is the game I'm playing too currently. I've had it wanting to process shaders 3 times now. Not sure if it actually downloaded something though.

I still see downloads of > 9 GB for Enshrouded (almost?) every day. I'm using the Steam beta client on Debian testing.

Same here download fallout new vegas and next day download over 350,8MB.
I don't even play the game or change anything.

• Fedora 40 steam btrfs raid1.
• /dev/nvme1n1p3 on / type btrfs (rw,relatime,seclabel,ssd,discard=async,space_cache=v2,subvolid=5,subvol=/)

Steam Stable 1716584667
Client Build Date: Fri, May 24 23:48 UTC +03:00
Web Build Date: Fri, May 24 23:31 UTC +03:00

EndeavourOS KDE Plasma 6.0.5
Kernel 6.9.1-zen1-2
steam 1.0.0.79-2

Warframe redownloads 12.3 GB every day, 2 month ago it was ~10 GB
upd: Increased to 13GB

Also I have 14 GB of shaders cache

On screenshot it still shows ~26 GB, but I manually deleted it

But I also have Witcher 3 installed ~62 GB, ~500Mb shaders cache
Just downloads RedKit update yesterday and never reloads any GB

Warframe installed on SSD, Witcher 3 on HDD

I understand there is less focus on Linux as compared to Windows, but this is horrendous.
Apart from this, it also happens with "Processing Vulkan shaders", which takes a long long time.

Apart from this, it also happens with "Processing Vulkan shaders", which takes a long long time.

Processing shaders is expected, this is not an issue. Enable background shader processing for the shaders to be processed in the background.

Apart from this, it also happens with "Processing Vulkan shaders", which takes a long long time.

Processing shaders is expected, this is not an issue. Enable background shader processing for the shaders to be processed in the background.

It's clear you have not actually read this issue.

The shaders reprocess and redownload almost every time steam starts. For many players, this boils down to gigabyte+ downloads, usually for multiple games. This is not normal. It is not efficient. It is not good, and for people with less wealth or who don't have gigabit internet, it's a blocker on this entire feature-set.

Worse, if the person isn't tech-savvy enough to realize that they can disable the feature, it's just a blocker for using some games entirely.

Disabling shader precaching is the closest users have to a solution on this - and for all I know, that's not just downloads, that's all shader caching. When the feature is disabled, lots of space is cleared - and it appears not to build up again locally.

It's clear you have not actually read this issue.

Now, there is no need to get personal, but I happen to know this person is very aware of what the issue is.

And I also want to clarify, just like him that the processing is NOT the issue here, the constant re-downloading of the shaders is.

Disabling shader precaching is the closest users have to a solution on this - and for all I know, that's not just downloads, that's all shader caching. When the feature is disabled, lots of space is cleared - and it appears not to build up again locally.

Also not a solution, but for people who have very slow internet connection, yes, it might be the only workaround as of this moment.
That also means the games might run like sh*t since the shaders have to be compiled live on the hardware while playing.

Edit:
I also want to add, that it seems WAY less frequent now, but it still happens once in a while. Re-downloading but registering 0 writing to disk.
Not on all, sometimes some of the shaders being downladed are being written to disk, witch I interpret as they have actually changed.

same problem. arch ext4 cs2 needs new shaderzz every time i open steam

Must be related to #10906. Games try to download shader after every restart, but since pre-chache shader is turned off, it gives disk write error instead.

(Linux Mint, .deb Steam client)

I've found an inelegant, temporary work-around:

• Set the game to download updates at launch only
• Launch the game from your library and then immediately switch to the download page
• Pause the download
• If the game launches before you can pause, simply hit the super-key to switch back to Steam and pause the download. I don't have a Steamdeck so I don't know how you would do this on the deck.

• If you pause the download and the game doesn't launch, just launch it again without releasing the pause.

Unfortunately, this comes with a major flaw. I'm not sure what will happen when the game pushes an actual update. I'm still experimenting but hopefully, the game will refuse to start when this happens.

EDIT2:
I've been using this work-around on a daily basis for 3 weeks since I posted it here and it's performing fantastically. I haven't had a single problem in game as a result of pausing the pre-cache update. I've had 1 actual game update during that time and it prohibited me from downloading the update without updating the pre-cache first, which would've been necessary anyway. So, pausing the pre-cache update hasn't led to any adverse behaviour so far.

EDIT1:
An actual update pushed by the game is not affected by this work-around. When the game pushes an update, the play button in the library will be replaced by the update button. However, during such an update, the pre-cache will be downloaded again. This is a good thing since the update might contain new shaders that haven't been processed yet.

I think this has been present for multiple years now. At least with the latest client you can quit and restart Steam and the phantom updates disappear. Valve, please fix.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2132078830

Looks like in Steam Beta 1719967667 it was fixed. Now Warframe downloads ~40mb, writing on disk ~450mb

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2212325490

Well... It's not. Steam Beta 1720650399
Downloading 12.5Gb, writing 12.9Gb.

I the same problem, borderlands, cyberpunk, cs2. Every day 1.7Gb download, i think this s*** are going to kill my SSD, anyway, the only solution for now are disable vulkan shades

I don't see any issue anymore nowadays by having this feature disabled. Maybe all my game I play are working well without a pre-compiled shader cache for the whole game, or maybe Proton is good enough nowadays to just compile shaders on the fly without stuttering. Just let go people, it will be fine, just try.

I've got the same issue on Arch. It's unbelievable that this thread is so old and nothing happened

I don't see any issue anymore nowadays by having this feature disabled. Maybe all my game I play are working well without a pre-compiled shader cache for the whole game, or maybe Proton is good enough nowadays to just compile shaders on the fly without stuttering. Just let go people, it will be fine, just try.

Try activating again.
Not sure WHAT they changed, but it is definitely no longer showing the same tendencies on my system.
At least I have not changed anything on my side, but one day the daily gb downloads just stopped...

Honestly I'm done with Shader Pre-Caching :)
It was fun while it was needed, but seriously it's good now I don't know, maybe it is since I switched from GTX 1060 to a more powerful RX6800 AMD card, but I don't see the difference now. No issues at all.

@Zorrototo shader compilation takes your cpu, not gpu

@Zorrototo shader compilation takes your cpu, not gpu

But having a better graphics card, especially from a GTX 1060, a card from 2016, is surely doing something in the equation, as said I have no issue now with that card without shaders pre-caching. CPU did not change.

Anyway my point was now, it doesn't seem these feature is a crucial point to have a good Proton experience, and maybe the card helped too.

To add to the anecdata, I disabled shader precaching after https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2234265518 and haven't seen a phantom update even after several reboots. I'd initially dismissed that as the cause since half the updates didn't have the shader label. edit: Spoke too soon—just got some. Thankfully they were the 0 B download kind. I can reliably reproduce this by switching to Offline Mode and back, so I've opened #11246. But that's nothing compared to the shader junk—I think I'll be leaving shader precaching off.

There's certainly something wrong with precaching—1.7 GiB of shaders? The game itself isn't even that big.

That's expected, if you disable Shader Pre-Caching feature, then you'll not suffer from redownloading all shader caches of your game. When I was talking about disabling it and not having any issue, I was talking about having no issue in the game, no stuttering when compiling shaders on the fly (opposite to having Shader Pre-Caching enabled where shaders are pre-compile before you even start the game).

@Zorrototo if pre-caching is disabled - shaders will compile at runtime. If your CPU can handle it and the bottleneck stays on the GPU - you won't notice anything. That's it. Hope i've clarified it a bit) Have a good day!

(but if game CPU intensive - you will definitely notice it)

Yes I know, compiling shaders is done on the CPU. But my point, again, is that it doesn't seem to be a burden in Proton anymore. AND additionally, maybe the new AMD card helped in the process. A few years ago games were locking hard when compiling shaders (hence the absolute need to me to run this feature), now it seems it is transparent.

Can confirm this still happens. 9.5GB daily Enshrouded download.

Did the people with the issue try to simply disable the whole functionality and see if they experience issues? as I already said earlier, it doesn't seem to be an issue now without Shader Pre Caching enabled. Maybe you'll find peace by stopping using the feature.

I've tried disable it. Warfame starts shuttering very much.

Can confirm CS2 fps dropped from 144(vertical sync) to 70-80(vertical sync), same settings after disabling the feature.

OK, I should have a try to compare and see if we have same experience with these games.
I guess it depends on the game.

PS: enabling V-sync will force it to drop to half your refresh rate if it can not sustain the refresh rate. I understand about stuttering appearing, but halving your FPS makes no sense here, it is caused by V-sync.

Can confirm CS2 fps dropped from 144(vertical sync) to 70-80(vertical sync), same settings after disabling the feature.

How is that possible? Its only compiled shaders. I see no difference

Can confirm CS2 fps dropped from 144(vertical sync) to 70-80(vertical sync), same settings after disabling the feature.

I just ran community benchmark map and got the exact same results that I did with the shader pre-caching turned on.

Did the people with the issue try to simply disable the whole functionality and see if they experience issues?

Yes, disabling shader pre-caching does fix the daily shader redownloads. Its a cool feature that I hope gets fixed, but I'd rather not be downloading 10+GB a day that doesn't even get written to disk because its already there.

I just ran community benchmark map and got the exact same results that I did with the shader pre-caching turned on.

Did you clear the caches first before testing? If it's there of course the performance is going to be identical.

enabling V-sync will force it to drop to half your refresh rate if it can not sustain the refresh rate.

Exactly, it looks like the cpu is working harder to compile them in the background. Could be something else, but in CS2 this result was pretty consistent for me.

144fps when I let it process shaders, else I'm playing at 80.

Did you clear the caches first before testing? If it's there of course the performance is going to be identical.

I'm not sure how to clear the cache. Steam deleted its "precaching" content and /.cache/mesa_shader_cache is empty, though /.cache/mesa_shader_cache_db isn't.

It is ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache or something like that, where the Shader Pre Caching cache should be, delete the folder if disabling the feature did not delete it all.

Well I'm definitely confused now. FPS went way down after deleting the shadercache, even if I ran the game for several minutes hoping it would recompile its own shaders. After re-enabling shader precaching and downloading shaders for cs2, the FPS actually got WORSE. I restarted my PC and it went back to what it was originally. I thought that maybe I should try running around in game to "rebuild the shader cache" and then restarting my PC, but this time after deleting the shadercache folder the FPS stayed the same, even post reboot. I probably did something wrong but I don't know what.

AVG 380 1% low 180 with shader precaching (ran yesterday, small update since)
AVG 255 1% low 127 after deleting shadercache folder
AVG 218 1% low 108 after redownloading the shader cache
AVG 377 1% low 178 after rebooting

I'm getting daily 15GB updates to Overwatch 2 for the past week or so.

Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
Kernel: Linux 6.8.0-47-generic

I'm getting daily 15GB updates to Overwatch 2 for the past week or so.

Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS Kernel: Linux 6.8.0-47-generic

I have the same problem. any solution?

I'm getting daily 15GB updates to Overwatch 2 for the past week or so.
Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS Kernel: Linux 6.8.0-47-generic

I have the same problem. any solution?

No, but there are 2 workarounds that I know of.
One is mentioned earlier, by disabling shader caching completely and removing the cache.

But a better solution I have found recently is to set every game (I have not found a way to do this globally) to (rightclick on game) properties > updates > automatic updates: only update this game when I launch it.

The reason the download happens is when the games are verified, it also downloads something for some reason.
By disabling the autoupdate, that behavior stops.
And when launching the game with this setting, there is no verification of files (the bug), it only updates in case there actually IS an update for the game.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2488811610

Your solution is really good. Thanks

I think I'm encountering the same thing for CS2 mainly. However what makes it much worse is that instead of on Steam startup, CS2 starts "validating" when I start the game, which causes game launch to take like 5 minutes while also freezing up my entire system for short moments constantly. It's extremely annoying to have to start the game, close it, wait for Steam to do... something for like 10 minutes straight and then finally be able to actually play the game...

This is on a Steam Deck Oled with vanilla Arch Linux installed, running Hyprland.

I’ve been having an issue with CS2 where I constantly need to verify the game files every time I launch it. After troubleshooting, I discovered something interesting:

If I launch the game using a shortcut (whether from the taskbar or desktop), the game always requires me to verify the files before starting.

However, if I launch CS2:

By right-clicking on Steam in the taskbar and selecting the game from the context menu,
OR directly from the Steam library,
...the game launches fine, without needing to verify files.
Here’s the key difference I noticed: When I launch it through Steam, it does a quick cloud sync just before starting the game, which doesn’t happen when launching via the shortcut (even if the shortcut points to the cs2.exe file).

I suspect the problem is that the shortcut doesn’t include some launch parameters or doesn’t initialize something critical, like the anti-cheat system, which Steam seems to handle properly.

launching through taskbar also ignores the "beta" options

Wow still a problem, trying work arounds but really, its's been years?

Yup. I'm also amazed how it hadn't been fixed yet. I gave up and disabled the shader cache overall

Having the same issue with BeamNG.drive, every time I start Steam, it says "validating" and downloads an arbitrary size of data, sometimes 700MB sometimes 3GB. This drained my mobile data in a matter of minutes when I opened Steam and forgot about it while I was without Wi-Fi!

Had this issue for a long time, but now it started causing steam and game to fully freeze when its on 100% and i need to restart them by killing processes. Now even "Only update this game when i launch it" doesn't help, because it will just start downloading when i open game and freeze the same way. Only fix for this i found is fully disabling shader cache.

I have same problem on linux mint. Steam validates CS2 everyday.

I have multiple games that do this. I get ~8GB Rocket League updates repeatedly (like.. every other day). I get PoE2 updates constantly too. This is even without restarting the system or client. Downloaded an 8.1GB of RL shaders Friday, and that same exact 8.1GB today.

valve pls fix

Same issue. RL. Quite frustrating when you need to get on 2v2 tournament starting in 1min and you miss it because you just turned on your pc :(

Did I completely miss this setting earlier or did they implement this since I made the comment about disabling auto-updates for each and every game nov last year?

No matter what, do this in settings > downloads as a workaround for this bug:

It has always been there.

I have same problem on linux mint. Steam validates CS2 everyday.

Same problem on Arch linux.

I switched to Linux last week and didn't notice an issue until I installed Enshrouded. At first I thought the game was actually updating regularly, but now I understand that it's just validating the cache every time I start Steam. I'm trying the proposed workaround of only updating on game launch, but I do wish that I didn't have to do that.

I switched to Linux last week and didn't notice an issue until I installed Enshrouded. At first I thought the game was actually updating regularly, but now I understand that it's just validating the cache every time I start Steam. I'm trying the proposed workaround of only updating on game launch, but I do wish that I didn't have to do that.

Deactivate shader precaching. you can find it within steam -> settings -> Downloads -> shader pre-caching

If you have an average PC (for nowadays) you should have no impact on your gaming experience.

I have this problem every time I quit the game (Enshrouded), for some reason.

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2630813492

But do i have to download the 9 gigs when i start the game?

My Problem since couple of days is with a 9gb Pre-Shader Cache download for Rocket League

Everyday after starting Steam I have to download the same size of "Pre-Shader Cache".

Specs:
OS: Zorin x86_64
Kernel: 6.8.0-52-generic
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (24) @ 3.7GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Ha
Memory: 5,70GiB / 31,26GiB (18%)
GPU Driver: NVIDIA 565.77
Steam:
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1738026274
Steam Client Build Date: Tue, Jan 28 01:50 UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date: Tue, Jan 28 01:44 UTC -08:00
Steam API Version: SteamClient021

I'll post it again:

There are two workarounds known right now.

1. Enable "only update on launch" (I have not had any trouble since doing that)
2. Disable pre-caching shaders completely

I prefer option 1, others option 2. Both works for stopping the downloads.
Up to you to decide if you want pre-caching or not.

Best solution would obv be for steam to fix it, but it seems they are not going to any time soon...

Enable "only update on launch" (I have not had any trouble since doing that)

Enabling this option cause that game won't update on steam launch, but will update on game launch, and at the end of update game will freeze completely.

So I can't say this can be workaround as a "disabling pre-caching" 🤔

Enable "only update on launch" (I have not had any trouble since doing that)

Enabling this option cause that game won't update on steam launch, but will update on game launch, and at the end of update game will freeze completely.

So I can't say this can be workaround as a "disabling pre-caching" 🤔

No it doesn't. I might SAY there is an update, but when you press "update", in 9 out of 10 times it will make the crc check (or whatever it does) towards your cached files locally and compare with what wants to be downloaded.
It then skips the download because the check matches on both sides and then immediately starts the game. (at least that is how it acts on MY computer)
THAT is the bug. If steam automatically updates immediately at start, the crc check does not seem to be performed correctly, hence leading to constant re-downloads.

If it downloads it means either of two things:

• There actually IS a game update
• There are more efficient shaders compiled and uploaded to steam, hence download them (happens to me for example with brand new released games where shader compiling can be refined, or games I have not played in a very very long time)

I'm having the same problem.
I switched to Linux a few days ago and I'm playing Enshrouded. I have to download 10.3 GB every time I want to play, and I don't have fiber, so it's taking a long time...

@Paco-4272 I'm in the similar situation (but with limited traffic)
seems like this issue is kinda stuck for quite a while, so temporary solution is - disable shader pre-caching (settings, downloads, last line)

for me; l4d2.
did tranfer it from a external drive to my laptop, this is where this issue had begone.
did try a reinstall etc.. somewhere there might be a left-over file triggerin' it, maybe?
fedora, plasma.

Same here but it doesn't seem to be a bug it is shader pre-caching update. Described here:

Disabling shader pre-caching resolved this for me when the issue was small verifications on game close.

I have the same problem with Counter-Strike 2:

When there is no true game update, the shaders are re-cached each day, causing a ~2.5 Gb download when I start Steam. I cannot believe this is intended behavior, it makes no sense.

My system:
OS: Debian 12.10 Linux-x86_64
Kernel: 6.1.0-32-amd64
Steam Beta Branch: Stable Client
Steam Version: 1745876290
Steam Client Build Date: Mon, Apr 28 5:09 PM UTC -08:00
Steam Web Build Date: Fri, Apr 25 5:04 PM UTC -08:00
Steam API Version: SteamClient022
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA Driver Version: 535.216.01

BTW I tried disabling shader pre-caching, but then the shaders are processed when the maps load, and often the shader compilation stops before completion, rendering the game unresponsive and leaving me with no mouse control when I switch window.

Valve plz fix.

Witch is why I say the solution fix I came up with is better if you don't have very powerful hardware where your computer is able to recompile shaders at runtime without you noticing it.

Set steam to "Only update at games launch" and you get rid of the problem, the shades will not re-download, only updates will be applied (if there are any) when you start the game.

Witch is why I say the ~solution~ fix I came up with is better if you don't have very powerful hardware where your computer is able to recompile shaders at runtime without you noticing it.

Set steam to "Only update at games launch" and you get rid of the problem, the shades will not re-download, only updates will be applied (if there are any) when you start the game.

I tried the option "Only update at games launch", with Shader Pre-caching enabled, and now the Shader download is after I leave the game, the first time of the day, instead of when Steam starts, which isn't that much better. Even when there isn't any game update. I still believe this should be addressed by Valve.

Billions of dollars in loot boxes and you can't hire some people to fix basic issues, why valve?

Probably because it is not basic issue.

This happens to me quite frequently on ubuntu.

Hey guys -- for some of you, this may fix the issue.

• If you're running into this issue
• and your cache (or library) is on a different drive / partition than the default folder
• and you have enough room for the cache on the drive with the default steam folder

then try this:

# enter the non-default library
cd /<path to non-default steam library>/steamapps/
# Optional: copy over all shadercache data to the default library's shadercache
cp -a shadercache/* /<path to default steam library>/steamapps/shadercache/
# backup or delete the non-default library's shadercache
mv shadercache shadercache.backup   # you may want to delete this folder instead - it's huge.
# link the default library's shadercache into the current folder (the non-default library)
ln -s /<path to default steam library>/steamapps/shadercache  

This makes it so that when the non-default library is used for play or downloads, it uses the default library's shadercache.

If you run into problems, delete the default shadercache folder so that all is re-downloaded. If you still run into problems, delete the shadercache links (which will cause Steam to just re-create the folders and go back to default behavior). Note that deleting these folders will cause steam to have to re-download the shaders. ..but, that's already happening, so...

Assuming the Steam directory is at ~/.steam/steam, after the first pre-shader compilation is complete, rename ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_64/fossilize_replay to fossilize_replay.bk, and then create a dummy Bash script.

This might prevent the shaders from recompiling every time?

mv ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_64/fossilize_replay ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_64/fossilize_replay.bk
echo 'exit 0' >  ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_64/fossilize_replay
chmod a+x ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_64/fossilize_replay

bump, issue is still occuring on my end, everytime i restart steam client its downloading 1.3GB content for CS2
deleting "~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache" and additional disk's library "/disk2/SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/*" doesn't resolve the issue. Along with this issue everytime i launch a game it downloads the vulkan shaders again which takes forever.

Distro: Debian 13
Package: steam:i386
Version: 1:1.0.0.83~ds-3

bump, issue is still occuring on my end, everytime i restart steam client its downloading 1.3GB content for CS2 deleting "~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/shadercache" and additional disk's library "/disk2/SteamLibrary/steamapps/shadercache/*" doesn't resolve the issue. Along with this issue everytime i launch a game it downloads the vulkan shaders again which takes forever.

You can either try to do the symlink thing described in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-3238843367
Or just disable autoupdate as I described in https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/10285#issuecomment-2852066896

I have not had this issue since I set all my games to "only update at game launch", which indicates to me that this is some kind of race condition. All I know is the issue is gone after doing that, and if it is a race condition, symlinks will not fix that but waiting a few seconds does, ie not start updating immediately on steam client launch.

For me this changes close to nothing, because I just click the "manage downloads" (at the bottom of the steam client) and pull up the games I think I will play it in the near future and they will be updated immediately. But your opinion if this is ok or not might be different.

man, it's crazy that this issue is still around.

This issue drove me nuts on 2 different distros. The answer was as simple as:

1. install GE-Proton (and set the compatibility for the game to use this)
2. PROTON_LOCAL_SHADER_CACHE=1 launch option
3. turn off Downloads -> shader pre-caching

This issue drove me nuts on 2 different distros. The answer was as simple as:

1. install GE-Proton (and set the compatibility for the game to use this)

2. PROTON_LOCAL_SHADER_CACHE=1 launch option

3. turn off Downloads -> shader pre-caching

Using GE-Proton (or any Proton version) with Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) will not get you banned, but it will prevent you from joining official VAC-secured servers. VAC generally fails to initialize or authentic properly through compatibility layers, resulting in an automatic kick or an "unstable/invalid signature" error rather than a penalty.