Well, for FreeZone to work we enter a list of source IP’s on the platform management system and then all traffic with these IP’s as sources are not counted towards the users Cap.

Currently, the core issue with FreeZoning STEAM is that the STEAM client software automatically decides where to get its content from based on the server load and availability, it may also initiate multiple connections to speed up downloads.

To cater for this we have entered a list of possible international sources that it could potentially download from, but there is a platform limitation, so traffic from some ISP’s is still being counted towards the users Cap.  This is a big problem, and has generated a lot of administration tasks due to user queries, despite the fact that it is still in beta testing.  Our traffic platform vendor is working towards solving the problem as fast as possible with the information we have supplied.

We hope to receive feedback and a resolution very shortly so that we can target the problems and get STEAM up and running on FreeZone.   Please bear in mind that while we are all excited about the possibilities STEAM will give our gamers; it is still in testing and isn’t considered live at the moment.

We will officially launch this product as soon as we are confident that downloading game files, off whichever source the STEAM application chooses for efficiency, won’t drain bandwidth. Keep in mind that certain additional STEAM content such as advertising as well as videos and images that can be selected for download on STEAM are supplied by 3^rd party providers. This means that it originates from a different source IP and won’t be FreeZoned.  This should however be a comparatively small portion of traffic compared to the gaming files.

In Australia, implementing STEAM on an “unmetered basis” has also proven difficult, with their STEAM servers performing in a similar fashion to ours.  We’re using their findings, along with our own, to ensure that STEAM gets up and running in a fully functional manner with FreeZone.

It has become apparent that the software running STEAM has a mind of its own, and in order to coax it into doing your bidding a lot of people have been utilizing the STEAM Watch application to block out connections to servers other than the WA FreeZone hosted one.

This should at least help to tide you over slightly during the interim period.  Just keep in mind that all of the content is not synced to all geographical regions, so the content may not be on the server you “locked” STEAM Watch to.  Because it also blocks STEAM’s ability to initiate multiple connections, downloads may also be quite slow in certain instances.

We are working on the problems listed above and sorting out the complexities of FreeZoning STEAM as fast as we can, and as soon as we make a breakthrough and receive the information we need we will let you know.