Steam releases 9 hrs later.

[deerefarm]

I was just looking at the release schedule that Chacki put up and I notice that the game releases on Steam 9 hrs after the Giant's release in most places. That means if you get the game from Giants you can play a lot earlier than the Steam version. I know that Steam will be a quick and easy download, but I'm not sure about the Giants servers and how quick they are. I'm considering cancelling my Steam purchase and buying directly from Giants.

[Dapp]

Yeah It's a shame there's such a big difference in release times.. FS19 was launched at midnight on steam.. so why this choice? to sell more copies through giants itself?
I was hoping to play the game before I have to go to work.

[roggek]

I was just looking at the release schedule that Chacki put up and I notice that the game releases on Steam 9 hrs after the Giant's release in most places. That means if you get the game from Giants you can play a lot earlier than the Steam version. I know that Steam will be a quick and easy download, but I'm not sure about the Giants servers and how quick they are. I'm considering cancelling my Steam purchase and buying directly from Giants.

Don't...
The Giant Servers are like molasses, and even with a fast internet as I have, the download speed is throttled, it took 4-5 hours to download a 12.8 GB IMG-file.

[TomTom996]

I bought via Giants and already downloaded and installed the game. Now is just waiting game until 22nd.

[Luftkopf]

I pre-ordered from Giants, and it is downloading now. It's not the quickest, but it's working.

[faruk9154]

Will pre-loading be allowed before release time on Steam?

[wrs]

Just started the download of my copy of FS22. Opening in an hour....Will see.

Plus the 4 bonus tractors too.

[this_is_gav]

Yeah It's a shame there's such a big difference in release times.. FS19 was launched at midnight on steam.. so why this choice? to sell more copies through giants itself?
I was hoping to play the game before I have to go to work.

It's been that way forever. GIANTS have no control over the Steam release times. Intentional or not you can hardly blame them if they prefer purchases through their own website rather than having Steam taking 30% from each sale.

FS15, 17 and 19 were all released earlier through GIANTS than on Steam. I remember playing all at around 9pm the day before (so if it's the same it will likely be even earlier than the given time).

[chaseydog]

GIANTS have no control over the Steam release times.

Exactly, Giants can tell Steam, or any other vendor a time and date that they can not release before but have no control over when the vendor releases after that line has been crossed.

I preloaded Friday morning (EST) and it took about 1.5 hours. Latter in the afternoon, from the post I saw on Reddit, download times slowed to a crawl. It’s Saturday morning now and download times seem to have improved.

[FarmerLee73]

Actually I emailed steam about release times and they redirected me to Giants support saying steam has no control over when games are released.