I also can not find the option to turn off upgrades. Yes I will make a separate directory next time but now I can no longer play on the server I was on
That is because Steam doesn't offer such an option. There is nothing Eleon can do about that. Complain about it to Steam (not that it will do any good, Steam won't change it). There are workarounds you can do, such as copying the game outside of Steam folders and running it from the game Exe file (with Steam running). This will prevent it from ever updating and you can still play online and everything. Steam however does NOT allow you to stop updates, at all. The best you can do from within Steam is tell it to only update when you launch the game, but it will still update when you try to play. Again, a Steam issue that Eleon can't change.
oh well.. I am at the mercy of my server admin now. Disappointed but I'll copy the game outside of steam next time
I highly recommend not doing this. If you don't keep on top of every hot fix you will cause yourself and your server admin a lot of headaches as your build will be different from what the server is using.
Do you have a screenshot to back that claim up? Steam only offers the option I mentioned above. They do not have an option to completely disable updates for games. The only individual options Steam offers concerning game updates are, https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3087-QYPV-9209 Available settings: "Always keep this game updated" "Only update this game when I launch it" - will temporarily disable game updates "High Priority - Always auto-update this game before others" None of those three options disable game updates at all. There is no 4th option. "Only update this game when I launch it" is the closest you can come to disabling updates as I already said, but it doesn't do a thing if you actually plan on playing the game. Lol. Individual games may offer old versions in the "Betas" tab, as this game sometimes does, but that has nothing to do with game updates. That is a separate thing entirely.
I can only backup this quote, Steam forces you to update mainly because most games are Multiplayer, if people would play MP with a lot of different versions then MP would quickly become impossible, this would be a contract breach from Steam, so games will always be updated. Also players are not always aware of updates that came out, so Steam doesn't leave the update job to the player. If you don't like this system, then play your games on GOG, Gamersgate or elsewhere. The copy-steam-game-elsewhere trick is only recommended if you persist to play on a specific version in SINGLE PLAYER. So OP, if you want to play on a server then keep your game updated.
Obviously the OP has to keep their game updated to play on a server. You can't join if there is a version mismatch anyways, so moot point. It was meant as a temporary solution when you know the server isn't going to update immediately but you still want to play. It's not going to work once they update, you are going to have to update the game at that point (and also manually copy over any blueprints you made in that time, etc).
Actually you can sometimes connect to a server that is running a different build (but the same version), and this has caused issues in the past.
It is on the OP to assume that risk or not. As already mentioned, it is meant as a temporary solution when you notice an update JUST came out and the server isn't updated yet. It's not meant to be permanent in MP. If you do it as a permanent option in MP then you also assume the responsibility of making sure you stay on the correct version for the server. Sometimes, just sometimes, people can be responsible for their own actions. If you screw it up, and an admin doesn't want to help you fix it afterwards (or simply can't), that's on you..... And by "you" I mean them. Also, being able to sometimes join an incorrect version server, that is a dev issue. If the version checker was set correctly that should be impossible. What is the point in checking for version mismatches if it doesn't work correctly? No, sounds like a bug for the devs to fix. It should be checking for the individual build number so that is never possible to have a mismatch issue.
Steam offers the ability to lock your game to a certain build through the betas tab, but those builds have to be made available by the developer. Here is the example of Stellaris, which provides the option to revert through every major release version of the game. Empyrion has this functionality provided partially, but they only provide old alphas in the archive.
Yes you are right, the beta branch of Steam allows such game repositories, but the purpose of beta sections is for the developer to do experiments with a version, usually with feedback from the players in Discord channels etc. (beta testers) , the beta branch is AFAIK not used as an overall game repository unless the devs have special reasons to do so, so don't expect other games or developers to behave like in Stellaris. The examples you provide may be beta versions that if loaded would not work well in MP with the latest regular versions; this would not matter if the game is purely single player, but most games are MP too like EGS, a reason why not every EGS 1.x.x version is saved in beta. There were requests to do so, but I remember the devs answered negative.
Did you even read my entire post? I'm guessing not, since I covered the Betas tab in the last section. The Betas tab has nothing to do with game update settings through Steam. It's a completely different tab..... Steam only offers the 3 options I mentioned above concerning game updates. The options in the betas tab are offered by the game devs, not by Steam. It is completely different to the game update settings.
In as example 7 days to die i can patch the game to the most past version. 19.5, 19.4, 19.3,... all staged releases are there. Even when it pached i can directly patch the old version back on it. This is technicall nearly the same like disable updates.
You too you don't seem to read posts, please read my #13. 90% of games don't have this possibility unless they are EA games like 7 DTD, and why EA games do this I have mentioned it above. For beta testers it's important to have all versions available to retrace what worked in a version and what not; for the normal player this is useless and most of the time the devs lock these versions with a password. As you can see, this has plain nothing to do with updating-downgrading. For very old games there is still a Steam database for old game builds, but Steam has abandoned this section for DRM reasons, newer games don't use this database anymore, and this is really old stuff.
ok, didnt know that. Then its just another problem with Empyrion got released in early alpha stage as a anniversary event what has nothing to do with the state of the game quote.
Well, according to the EULA Empyrion is still Early Access. https://store.steampowered.com//eula/383120_eula_0