It is clear that the auto-updater is running through both the internal flight simulator data throttle AND the internal data cap.
Obviously it’s annoying to have your update throttled, but even worse, if the download causes you to hit the data cap you set, it not only fails the file download, but it freaking RETRIES it. Which obviously will hit the data cap at the same exact point, fail, and retry to infinity.
So yeah, you set a data cap because you don’t want to use too much data in a given month, and the updater uses that information to effectively sit there and use as much data as it possibly can… infinitely! It will never finish, and the data DOES count against your data plan… it really is downloading the same bits over and over. Thanks Asobo!
And you can’t even change the data cap setting, because you can’t access it until the update is finished! Really brilliant, guys.
For anybody having this issue, you can “fix” it by disabling Steam cloud backup, then finding / renaming the files “datausage” and “profile_00” in Programfiles(x86)/Steam/ (do a search, they’re buried in a subdirectory). After renaming those two files, start Flight Simulator again and it should begin where it left off, with no cap to hit. Once the update is finished, you can replace the newly created profile with the one you renamed earlier (un-rename it, essentially), which will restore your settings the way you had them.
I’ve seen some ridiculous stuff in software before, but I think this one takes the cake. This simulator has so much potential, but the quality of work around the details is truly bad. The updater has to bypass the freaking internal data cap, guys.