Inside the Engine Room: Investigating Steam’s Content Delivery Platform Infrastructure in the Era of 100GB Games

As the size of video games continues to get bigger, new games and updates are becoming more visible in network operations. This research, coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the Steam store, provides an insightful exploration of a large-scale video game distribution platform. We place the operations of Steam under the lens and break down the details of its content delivery infrastructure. As part of this, we undertake a deep analysis of its data centres and cache locations. Recognising the trends in game development, this investigation acknowledges the dawn of the 100GB game era and the increasing pressure on distribution systems as a result. Our research showcases the significant impact of major video game releases and provides an extensive investigation into the capacity of Steam cache servers, illuminating the strategies deployed when demand overshadows capacity. Players downloaded a monumental 44.7 exabytes from Steam in 2022 alone. With no signs of slowing down in 2023, Steam served an average of 15 Tbps of traffic between February and October, with peaks of up to 146 Tbps. This study lays bare the intricacies and operational challenges inherent to the digital game distribution landscape.