I just waited patiently a week to play Skyrim while it updated, because my internet provider has a limit on daily downloads. It finally finished updating this morning & I try to start Skyrim and it says This game is not ready to play & it starts updating again? Why doesn't it download the update to a temporary folder, allow us to play the game, then apply to update after its been downloaded?

Have you followed these steps outline http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1258133-installing-from-disc-instead-of-steam/page__view__findpost__p__19698118?

Thank you for the quick response.
I just tried them & I still can't play the game while it's downloading the update. Is this normal? If it is, then I'll ask the question again: Why doesn't it download the update to a temporary folder, allow us to play the game, then apply to update after its been downloaded?

It has always been this way with Steam. You can play after the update, that is just how it works.

Pardon me for speaking out of turn but it seems completely unreasonable to expect to be able to play something at the same as it is being updated.
Are you unable to wait 15/20 minutes for it to finish?
Is your life THAT busy?

You don’t really know how long hes been waiting and will still wait. Instead of your put down you could have wish him luck. As for the Op I hope you will be able to play soon but you may have to have more patience. I know the fustration with steam ive been there.

Sorry if you all misunderstood my question. I'm not complaining, I never used Steam before I got Skyrim and was just curious if that is how updates will be installed or if I screwed something up.
Thank you all for the answers

Updates from Steam normally take only a couple of minutes with broadband connection. You could turn off automatic updating as well as set Steam to offline mode (this is recommended once you have Steam and specific games installed the first time as it allows you to control when patches are applied, and whether or not you want a patch when it is first released).

If you have a slower connection, you might want to let it update overnight while you sleep. That should work, too.

Hope that helps.

This was a large (200+MB) update and could take an extended period of time on a slow connection. It's not hard to imagine someone's connection being slow if they have a daily download limit imposed by their ISP. It sounds little better than dial-up.

And as others have said, you have to wait for the update to complete before you can play the game.

Looks like I'll be traveling back to Cyrodiil & playing Oblivion whenever a new patch comes out.

Where do you live(country) and what is your ISP?

I'm in California currently using an AT&T USB modem. I can only get 3G where I'm at. Next week I'm getting Hughesnet installed.