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Recently I posted a thread on the Bethsoft forum about phantom Steam Workshop downloads that were sometimes listing as updates for Skyrim itself. The problem has been reported elsewhere too, including the Steam Workshop forum in the Skyrim discussion section. A partial solution to the issue was raised in the 8th post of the thread. What I've since found should be a permanent solution to the issue for those who have it. In brief, the issue is being caused by a mod that you were subscribed to that has since been pulled off of the Workshop for some reason. It doesn't matter why, just that it no longer exists and the Steam client didn't properly dispose of the entry in your cache files. This is NOT the fault of the mod's author, nor is it the fault of Bethesda. This is entirely an issue caused by Valve so if anyone should get yelled at for this one it's them. Close your Steam client. You don't want to try modifying these files while it's running. Go to the Steam website using your usual web browser. Click to the Skyrim Workshop. There is a drop down menu for "Your Files", select "Subscribed Items". You'll want to be sure that any invalid items on this list are unsubscribed. To find the entry causing you problems, you need to determine the mod ID. Your subscribed mods will be listed in the following file: <Wherever you installed Steam>\steamapps\workshop\appworkshop_72850.acf Open it with any standard text editor. Mods will be listed in blocks that look like this: "87340753" { "manifest" "-1" "timeupdated" "1344126308" "timetouched" "0" "subscribedby" "<Your User Profile Number>" "ugchandle" "595851880384234733" } You will need that first number for each mod. The one in quotes by itself. So for this first entry, it would be 87340753. The URL then becomes this: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=87340753<--- Change that ID number for each mod in the list. When you get to a bad one, you'll be told the entry no longer exists, like this one: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=78419036You can plug the bad URL into Google and sometimes pull up a result for what it was. In my case, 78419036 leads back to a mod Chesko did for the 7000 Steps to High Hrothgar called The 418th Step, which he has apparently removed. With that knowledge in hand, find this block: "78419036" { "manifest" "-1" "timeupdated" "0" "timetouched" "0" "subscribedby" "<My User Profile ID>" } and remove it. Save the file. That's part of the problem solved. If you load the Steam client right now, you'll just get this entry dropped back in. You need to go one more step further and remove it from the following file: <Wherever you installed Steam>\userdata\<Your User Profile Number>\ugc\72850_subscriptions.vdf Open it with any standard text editor. You'll find an entry that looks something like this: "5" { "publishedfileid" "78419036" "time_subscribed" "1427494489" } Remove the whole block. Save the file. Load your Steam client. It should no longer be trying to download phantom Workshop entries. If you are still getting that happening, go back over the steps and check for more bad mods. You may have several that need this done. Fortunately I only had one bad one to deal with.