Every couple of starts to New Vegas, Steam downloads the mercenary pack even though its sitting in the data directory activated. It's the last time I'll ever use any bonus pack like this that's included with a game through steam, I've got the auto update turned off. There's no other settings I can see to make it stop doing this. If something doesn't work out in the game and I reload I have to wait and wait and wait, long enough sometimes to brew some coffee. This behaviour started up this week and I don't particularly want to play it offline just yet. I'm hoping its just something simple I've overlooked.

Something might be corrupting it. Have you tried deleting the data file totally and let it download it from scratch?

Mine does that too. I have the file checkmarked in the launcher which I've always thought might be the cause of it but am to lazy to check it out

Checked or unchecked it will always download and the game will always use it.

Steam seems insistent on making sure you have your DLC.

Yeh. I can't launch the game without downloading the Caravan pack.

Well that's just wonderful Hopefully they'll come to realize not everyone wants to use their packs in every game. Thanks for the replies.

I get it all the time as well. Doesn't seem to hurt anything far as I can tell.

Steam downloading it is intended, but it should only download it once and not care whether it is active or not.

To NOT use the file in the game, though, you have to delete the CaravanPack.nam file (or rename it). As long as it exists in you DATA directory, the game will autoload the DLC content into the game and the GECK.

Until Steam decides it needs to download that file again.

Honestly If I had known it was going to keep doing this I would have not activated the pre-order pack. What do we do when it's a 200meg DLC?

I get the message that it is downloading it, but it's so brief that it literally just flickers on the screen for less than a second and then is done. Seems more like a check to see if it's there (with an incorrect message) than an actual download.

Just checked the file dates, they're dated the same as all the other files (the date I installed the game). Guessing it's a Steam bug and maybe it really isn't downloading anything? If it does, it clearly doesn't overwrite the files

Is your internet connection some tin cans and string? Going by the size of the Classic Pack, I couldn't see how this would slow you down THAT much unless your connection is like that. And yes I've seen it "DL" the classic pack when starting my game up as well, and like Zuzax said I barely even notice it because all I see is the download complete message or w/e so it's not even downloading the entire set of files that make up The Classic Pack.

I don't think it is downloading anything, I think for whatever reason it reads the folder contents and assumes (erroneously) that it downloaded it. The games library never shows a percentage for downloading like it would normally, and like you said it slows nothing down it's just a little tiny pop up. There are bigger bugs to squash

The length of time differs a lot, I just had to wait ten minutes to get back into the game with the popup merc pack downloaded message. My internet connection is not the best speed but it's not that slow. This has only started happening this last week, I was playing the game with the merc pack removed from the data folder (because it kept auto activating) and the .nam file in the data folder with no problems. This game I decided to use it so put it back in the data folder. They should be looking at an easy way to deactivate this extra content now they're using steam