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    Valve says Steam users downloaded 100 exabytes of games in 2025, and are averaging 274 petabytes of installs and updates every day
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    Valve says Steam users downloaded 100 exabytes of games in 2025, and are averaging 274 petabytes of installs and updates every day


    Valve says Steam users downloaded 100 exabytes of games in 2025, and are averaging 274 petabytes of installs and updates every day

    https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/valve-says-steam-users-downloaded-100-exabytes-of-games-in-2025-and-are-averaging-274-petabytes-of-installs-and-updates-every-day/

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    33 Comments

    3. swisstraeng on

      274 petabytes of “We released this beta as a full release and need to fix it later if it sells well”

    5. Rhesusmonkeydave on

      Half of that is The Finals deciding it doesn’t like the shaders it downloaded at 10am and will only perform if it is served fresh *lunchtime shaders* like a spoiled toddler.

    6. BikeKiwi on

      Now if steam implemented a torrent network for their games just imagine the load that would be taken off their servers.

    8. TheLabMouse on

      I love how every bit of valve news is posted with the thumbnail of Gabe chilling on his yacht in a robe.

    10. Leoszite on

      This headline reads like Star Trek techjargon lol. Like I know they’re real units but still to a layman this sounds silly 😅

    11. mr_dfuse2 on

      i remember thinking steam would never work, when it released. back then we all still had monthly download limits. i was not so visionary..

    12. CNDW on

      We are all living on borrowed time, once valve decides to behave like most American tech corporations, we are all screwed

    13. CollegeOptimal9846 on

      That’s only 100,000,000 Terabytes, which somehow doesn’t seem like as much as it should be 

    18. Amber_ACharles on

      Wild numbers. McKinsey projects global data capacity triples by 2030. Energy infrastructure has a massive challenge ahead keeping up with this.

    23. JimothyzPamPams on

      I just wonder when they will be raided and have long overdue severe legal consequences for running and profiting off a fully manipulated, valve owned 13 billion dollar skin economy for CS2. Fools write articles that “valve crashed the skin economy” but i call it an orchestrated market correction. And the dip was bought and the year over year returns are greater than bitcoin, crypto and all fiat markets. Every skin is owned by valve and they get every skin returned to them when their algorithm says for owners deaths and inactivity. Its the biggest scam that never has been investigated. But Lord Gaben is a good guy and valve cares about the gamers right? 

    24. Bobaximus on

      If you were to print out 100 exabytes of data in binary form, on letter sized sheets, using standard sized print, it would require a stack of paper that would reach past Jupiter’s furthest orbit.

    26. ahorseofborscht on

      I remember so clearly the day Half Life 2 was unlocked on Steam. The total bandwidth capacity of the entire infrastructure was 11 Gbps total, which was completely overwhelmed with everyone trying to unlock the game at the same time.

    28. freeagency on

      I remember when the steam forums got all celebratory when the steam charts passed 1Gbit of peak bandwidth usage. I now have 2gb/2gb to my house…

    29. Flameancer on

      I literally downloaded a TB in a day because I beat Nioh 3 and can’t decide what to play next until crimson desert. Data caps would end me.

    30. KeeperOfWind on

      Me redownloading the same game 10 times because modding is pain in Bethesda games

    31. saltyspicehead on

      Steam is the only site where I can consistently max out my 2Gbs network via download. Their network infrastructure must be something to behold.

    32. aurumae on

      100 exabytes is a truly insane number. For reference, the global yearly traffic of the whole internet in 2016 was estimated at 1,000 exabytes ([source](https://blogs.cisco.com/sp/the-zettabyte-era-officially-begins-how-much-is-that)). Ten years later and Valve are personally having to serve the equivalent of 10% of 2016’s whole internet.

      I’d love to see a deep dive on how their systems are structured to handle such an insane amount of traffic. Google had to invent whole new tools like Kubernetes and NoSQL databases to address the scale of data they were handling, so I wonder what Valve have cooked up internally to help them manage it.