On machines where you start Steam manually in order to play a game, do you keep Steam running in the background after play session is over? Meaning if you no longer play any game for the moment, and just keep it running to be ready. Or do you close Steam, after the play session?
Of course not. Why would I do that?
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Social? The fuck kinda gamers are these? 😜
Also to get updates, so a game is already updated when you go to play it.
I don’t normally leave it running, but I might leave it running to let all the updates happen since i might not have run it in months. Then I might forget about it and leave it running for a day of two.
I mean that’s nice, none of it really appeals to me, but it doesn’t really seem relevant to the question which specifically mentioned on devices where you manually start Steam.
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I’m sorry did you not read my comment. The question was for people who manually start their Steam do you leave it on. You’re talking about Auto starting. You don’t get how it’s not relevant? Also what is them being valid have to do with anything? I said that’s nice but they don’t appeal to me. I didn’t say they weren’t valid. You didn’t read my comment and you didn’t read the op before responding to anything it seems like.
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Cool beans dude. I don’t care. Never ever doing it.
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What the fuck are you even talking about? Are you a bot? There’s no way you keep missing this. You’re the one that brought up auto start. I never did. Because the question specifically asked if you don’t use auto start. So when you brought up auto start I told you it wasn’t relevant . What’s not connecting here?
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I am halfway in between manually turn it on and close after finishing and just leaving it on after I finish. Half of the time I flip-flop on doing one way or the other.
That’s a tricky one to answer then. If I was in between, I probably wouldn’t know what to select either. Maybe what you want it to in future?
I auto start it and leave it running. I have lots of friends that will reach out on steam if we’re both online to play together. If I’m always offline because steam is off, I’ll miss games with friends.
Wait, the poll doesn’t work? Weird.
I keep it on all the time even though I barely play games because I only have a 100/30 connection available so on the rare weekend occasion that my friends have time to play games, I don’t have to boot it up only to see that the game we want to play of course has a 5GB update that will take me a half hour to download.
Forget about Squad where every file has to be reworked for a 10Mb update so it will max out an SSD for 20 minutes if it gets any hint of an update…
That’s modern gaming in 2026 for you. About the poll, I don’t know why it does not work for you. VPN users are not blocked at all this time (in previous polls I did it was blocked). Otherwise maybe some browser extensions might block something?
I don’t autostart it, but yeah, like most programs, I just leave it running once it is. Not like it makes any performance difference. Firefox chews memory WAY more readily than Steam does.
I manually start it when I want to play something.
I shut down the computer when I’m done for a while. Like before bed, or if I’m leaving the house.
But if I play a game and then spend some time on the computer doing something else, I don’t explicitly close steam.
I’m almost always using my laptop which isn’t the most powerful so I try to keep open software to a minimum. When I’m using my desktop I do leave it open though.
I close it completely when I’m not playing a game.
I don’t autostart it, but when I do use it, I keep it running until I turn off my computer. I don’t notice any slowdowns, so it’s not an issue.
I mostly use my Steam Controller to control my PC and the Steam keyboard is the best to use with the two touchpads.
That’s actually a good point. This is basically my biggest problem with the controller (not able to use it for everything, because i love it, and because I don’t run Steam all the time).
You don’t have to use Steam. If it wasn’t for the keyboard I might not have bothered with it.
I’m not sure what you mean. If Steam does not run in the background, then Steam Controller does not work like a normal controller. There are workarounds with external drivers, which I don’t want to use. And some applications can add support on their own with SDL3 library builtin. But we are not there yet, for universal replacement.
I mean like umm my PC is a steam machine so like. Generally always running even in desktop mode. It never really takes that much resources for things as tr heaviest things I do is gaming on steam anyways.
Then the question doesn’t apply to your use case. This poll is aimed at those who have to install and start Steam or set it up to autostart themselves.
Yeah, I leave it on.
Not started on boot, but once I fire up steam, it stays running unless I start up Star Citizen. I need all the help I can get with that mess.
