Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Buying Metal Gear Solid V via Steam? Don’t expect it to preload before launch day

By

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Digital games have a lot to offer over boxed copies when it comes to sheer convenience: no waiting for the mail to arrive, no need to head to your local game store to pick up a new game on launch day. The one downside is that, depending on your Internet connection, they can take a while to download.

Steam addressed this early on, allowing users to preload games on to their computers before launch day so that the game could be played as soon as it was unlocked. Plenty of gamers have already prepurchased Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for Steam expecting to do just that. There’s only one problem: They can’t.

Recommended Videos

Metal Gear Solid community manager Robert Allen Peeler confirmed to a fan on Twitter that the Steam version of the game won’t support the service’s preload functionality. Console gamers, on the other hand, will be able to preload the game.

Related

Considering preloading on Steam is a fairly common practice, this seems fairly strange, especially since Peeler didn’t know the reasoning behind this restriction. “I don’t have a specific reason, but I’ll ping the team once again,” he tweeted.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain requires 28GB of disk space, so it’s not exactly a light download. Luckily, PC gamers do get a head start of sorts. The PC version of the game unlocks midnight on September 1, New Zealand time, which works out to August 31 at 5 a.m. PDT or 8 a.m. EDT in the U.S. Meanwhile, the console versions unlock on August 31 at 9:01 p.m. PDT on the west coast or September 1 at 12:01 a.m. on the east coast, giving PC gamers a 13-hour head start to download the game.

Sadly, it appears that this may be the last “real” Metal Gear Solid game, at least in the eyes of many fans. Last month voice actor Akio Otsuka, who voices Snake in the Japanese versions of the games, tweeted that series creator Hideo Kojima’s development company Kojima Productions had been dissolved.

The PC version of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is currently available for preorder on Steam for $60.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
How well do you know video games? This free game will test your knowledge
A close up of ratchet in ratchet & Clank Rift Apart.

Do you know how long it takes to beat your favorite video games? You can now put your skills to the test with How Long To Beat: The Game, a free browser game that's worth checking out.

The project, launched in late April, comes from video game website How Long To Beat, which tracks the runtime of video games using player-submitted data. You can use the site to see how long it takes to complete the main story of a game or even how much time it'll take to go for 100% completion. How Long To Beat has turned that feature into a creative game that's surprisingly fun.

Read more
GTA 6: release date speculation, trailer, gameplay, and more
Lucia and her partner rob a store in GTA 6.

Believe it or not, it has been over a decade since the last GTA game. While tons of people are still dumping hundreds of hours into GTA Online, everyone has been (not so) patiently waiting for Rockstar to finally confirm that a new entry is in the works. Despite many leaks and rumors, the team held strong until late 2023. Now that the game is finally confirmed, we have a lot more solid ground to cover in terms of what Grand Theft Auto 6 will be. This is going to be the biggest game of the generation, if not all time, so let's hotwire a car and pull off a heist to get all the information about GTA 6 there is.
GTA 6 release date speculation

Along with the official announcement trailer for GTA 6, we got a release window for the game. While it is a little disappointing, we won't be exploring the next open-world phenomenon until sometime in 2025.

Read more
Is Rust cross-platform?
A player firing an assault rifle in Rust

Rust is one of the unique gaming experiences out there -- you wake up naked on a beach, scavenge for tools, build a home for yourself and your friends, and then watch that base be pummeled by rockets as another group of players destroys everything you've worked so hard for. One of the most popular survival games on the market, Rust is a brutal game, and playing it with friends makes the ups and downs of a server lifecycle bearable.

If you're looking to jump onto a Rust server with a buddy, you'll want to come prepared. Here's what you need to know about crossplay and Rust.
Is Rust cross-platform?
Rust is available on most major gaming platforms, but it isn't entirely cross-platform. Players on consoles -- PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One -- are able to play with each other, but PC players are in a completely separate world.

Read more