How did Skyrim update itself?!

[Qessanea]

Hey there, everyone!

 

My issue is this: I'd heard all about these updates for Skyrim, but didn't know how to acquire them. For about an hour today I was scouring the internet trying to find out how to update the game or install the patches or whatever, and couldn't find anything about how to do it. Something I read told me how to find out what game version I was already on, so out of sheer frustration I decided to do this, in case it gave me any insight about how to attain my goal. Turns out I'm already on V1.3.10 :wallbash: :facepalm: .

 

So now I'm curious as to how my game updated itself. I ask because I've heard of people who are still on earlier versions and I'm wondering how this is possible if Skyrim takes it upon itself to apply updates (not that I'm complaining - anything that takes technology out of my hands is fine by me!).

 

Any insight would be much appreciated. I'm rather ignorant about all these things and I'd like to learn more. :thumbsup:

[micalov]

Are you using the steam version of skyrim? If so yes Skyrim by default like most steam games will automatically download updates unless you disable it in the properties, although it has a tendency to annoyingly forget that setting.

[Qessanea]

Ah, yes, that would be it. Thank you very much for responding, Micalov :thumbsup: .

[Rooker75]

Actually, Steam ignores the setting to not update games. If Steam is online and you launch a game, it *will* begin to download any available patches, regardless of whether or not you've told it not to do that, and the very first thing it does is to corrupt the game.exe file to make it impossible to launch it again until the update finishes. I discovered all this when I tried to play Civilization V a few weeks ago while downloading a different game I had bought and realizing the stupid thing had started downloading a patch.

 

The only way to avoid a patch is to never, EVER launch the game while Steam is online.