Steam Download Stuck on 0 Bytes 

Steam is usually pretty optimized for downloading, installing, and managing your game collection to keep it updated with newest patches. But on occasion, you might check in on the update progress only to see Steam download stuck on 0 bytes per second, i.e. not actually downloading the files.

While it might sound concerning, there is usually nothing to worry about, and even if there’s a problem it’s typically a simple fix.

Check for Disk Usage and Installations

When Steam is downloading a game, it sequentially downloads the files, then installs them on the hard drive. This means when Steam download speed drops to 0, there’s a high chance your disk usage will go up to signal that files are being written. You can check that in Steam itself or use the Task Manager.

For Steam, the download rate and the disk write rate are on the top-right panel in the Downloads sections.

For Task Manager, you can open it and check how much disk usage Steam has. You can sort the items by name and look for “Steam Client WebHelper.” Note that you need to look at the disk usage rate, not the memory allocation.

Fix 1 – Pause & Resume Steam Download

In most cases, if you see Steam download stuck at 0 bytes, you can nudge it along by pressing pause, waiting for a bit, then resuming.

Alternatively, you can quit and restart Steam to see if the download has resumed properly. This should reset Steam’s cache and ensure it’s fetching files from the correct location.

Fix 2 – Change Download Server

Steam has many servers that are used to forward files and create real-time connections for online play. But on rare occasions, a server might experience a temporary outage. If Steam tries to download files from it, you’ll get Steam downloads stuck on whatever section they were trying to fetch before the server went down.

Step 1. Open Steam, click on the “Steam” option on the top-left, and select “Settings.”

Step 2. Go to the “Downloads” tab and click on the “Download region” dropdown (it should be on the top).

Step 3. Change the region to something else, but keep it relatively close to your real-life location to minimize delay.

If this doesn’t work, try changing the server a few times. Alternatively, you can check the unofficial Steam Status page to see if the entire platform is not down.

Fix 3 – Fix Corrupt Files

In some odd cases, Steam downloads stuck on 0 bytes might mean that the current files are corrupted and the platform is having issues replacing them. This is a relatively simple fix.

Step 1. Go to the Downloads section and select the game you’re having trouble downloading to go to its Library page.

Step 2. Right-click on the game’s name from the left panel or click the cog icon on the right-hand side (after information about time played etc.). Select “Properties.”

Step 3. Click on the “Installed Files” tab and hit “Verify integrity of game files.”

Step 4. Wait for the process to complete, then restart Steam to see if it starts downloading the files again. The verification process might take a while for longer games.