Can you use .pak packaging when publishing to Steam?

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1

Hey,

I’ve been reading up a few comments that when publishing to Steam you shouldn’t use .pak. The argument is that if you use .pak then it makes patching of the game on Steams end more challenging.

I was wondering if someone who has experience publishing to Steam could confirm this?

Ideally I would like to use pak so the packaged folders are a bit more organised.

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

2

You can use .pak files, and definitely should as the engine optimizes load times (significatnly) and final download size when you do.
You probably want to use pak chunks, which are mentioned also in this answerhub post:

which also points to some documentation should you be looking for a bit of knowledge:

There are actually a few newer features in the 4.19 release that make this system even more robust.

With chunked .pak files, you get all of the benefits of a .pak file, and you can organize your content so that assets that change only effect one or two chunks when you push updates to Steam.

Hope this helps.
-Spiris

3

Thanks @Spiris!

Is it then right to assume that if I was to use pak without chunking, then steam would upload the entire pak when there is a change?

4

YW, and yes, i believe that would be generally the case.