Over the holidays, I’ve looked at some old posts and comments leading up to DLC releases and quickly noticed that the SteamDB site often played a big part. It can be used to identify unreleased content, predict game update release windows as well as the contents of patches. It uses a complicated system of branches and depots to manage the files of the game and its add-ons as well as any additions and changes that are planned. For example, the patch we got today seems to have been slowly assembled in the Rc_Shipping branch over the past week or so and was then added to the Rc_Preview branch in one go about 3 days ago. This would mean that TSW3’s SteamDB development timeline is Development -> Rc_Shipping -> Rc_Preview -> Public. Most of you are probably not at all familiar with SteamDB, so I thought I’d make an attempt at explaining it to you below: What does that stuff you just talked about mean? If something is changed in the Rc_Preview branch (which will show up in SteamDB’s TSW3 history section), a new game update might happen in just a few days. By clicking on the depots that are part of the change and looking at their filenames, one can see which DLCs are affected by the update. The DLCs with encrypted files are unreleased, so seeing them in the Rc_Preview branch would definitely point to a release in the coming weeks. Additional things other than changes to the different branches can also be seen in TSW3’s SteamDB history, like stat or achievement updates, which have often been the main causes of DLC leaks in the past. These are done manually and thus usually not intertwined with the branch/depot changes. What about all the branches? Here are the important ones and how they are presumably used: Development is presumably the “area” where active development is going on. Very frequent changes here, some of which probably won’t be released for a few months. Rc_Shipping is where fully developed and tested changes are compiled and loosely assembled into patches. RC stands for release candidate, which is usually an internal version of an update or add-on that’s nearly ready to go public. Rc_Preview is (as I mentioned above) a place for fully assembled patches to go to, which are then distributed internally and/or to external partners like Sony and Microsoft for mandatory testing ahead of public release. Public is the branch we’re all using. Any updates made to it go out to all users as part of game updates/patches. Got any proof of that? This theory is supported by the different presence of the depots in the branches. If you click on the depots section of TSW3’s SteamDB site and switch between the different branches by scrolling all the way down and making a selection, you can easily notice that the Development branch has the most Manifest ID’s of unreleased depots (the part of the table with Encrypted: followed by lots of random letters and numbers). The unreleased depots are those with encrypted files and no clear name, usually at the bottom of the depot list, and there are so many in this branch because even DLCs that aren’t supposed to be released for another few months are usually being worked on here. If you go from the Development branch to Rc_Shipping, Rc_Preview and then Public, you’ll notice that the amount of Manifest ID’s at the bottom of the list is getting smaller and smaller because less and less unreleased DLCs are being worked on in these branches. You’re essentially going from the future to the present! Some of these unreleased encrypted depots have file sizes next to them. What do they mean? The depots often receive file sizes when they’re getting closer to release and the DLC is being finalized. These sizes tend to be in similar dimensions to released DLC: Just 100-200 MB usually means it’s a loco add-on. 300-700 MB could be an enhancement/expansion pack with multiple locos. Above 1 GB is usually a route. We actually can use the sizes of multiple encrypted depots right now to find out what DLC they will very likely end up representing. The well-known forum user WonterRail has made an informative comment about this in another thread: This is it for now! Hope I could help you
