In this case, the only viable fix is to uninstall the current Steam installation and re-download the latest client version from the official download page.

Corrupted Steam Installation – Another scenario that will trigger this particular issue is a widespread corruption issue.

If this scenario is applicable, you can resolve the issue by changing the Download Region to the correct country.

Download Region is too far away – This particular issue can also occur if the download region that is configured inside Steam’s settings is too far away from the actual physical region.

Several affected users have reported that they were able to resolve the issue by opting out of every Beta program.

The account is tied to Steam Beta – As it turns out, the frequency of cases where this problem occurs is higher with accounts that are enlisted to Steam Beta.

In this case, you can fix the problem by clearing the download cache. Whenever this happens, the downloader will refuse to download any new items.

Download Cache contains broken files – There’s also a fairly common glitch that might occur in situations where there are a lot of pending items inside the Download queue.

In this case, you can resolve the issue by deleting the corrupted mods and do an integrity scan. If this is a widespread issue, Steam will eventually refuse to download any new mods.

!Workshop folder contains corrupted files – It’s also possible that this issue occurs because some of the mod files that you downloaded have become corrupted.

If this scenario is applicable, you can verify if the mods are actually downloading by switching to Big Picture Mode.

Mods status bar only appears in Big Picture Mode – For some reason, Steam changed the default behavior, so in the latest versions mod updates will download silently in the background, so you can no longer track their progress.

Steam big picture mods