Valve recently published its Steam Year in Review 2025, and most people quickly focused on the company’s comments about future hardware like potential updates to the Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and other devices.
However, another detail in the report shows just how massive Steam has become in terms of global data traffic. According to Valve, Steam delivered around 100 exabytes of data to users in 2025. This is a major jump from 80 exabytes in 2024.
To understand the scale, Valve shared a few breakdowns. Steam users downloaded an average of 274 petabytes of installs and updates every day. That equals about 11.42 petabytes per hour or roughly 190,000 GB every minute. These numbers include game downloads, updates, patches, preloads, and other data delivered to players across the platform.
It is difficult to visualize what 100 exabytes actually means. An exabyte equals one billion gigabytes, so Valve is essentially delivering an enormous amount of data to gamers around the world every year.
This growth is not surprising when you look at how Steam itself has expanded over the years. Valve said the platform crossed 25 million concurrent users five years ago. Since then, it has continued to grow steadily.
Steam now reaches around 42 million peak concurrent users, which means millions of players are downloading and updating games at the same time.
Large modern games also play a role in this growth. Many new AAA games now require 80GB to 150GB of storage, and regular updates can add several gigabytes more. Live service games also release frequent patches and seasonal content, which further increases download traffic.
Interestingly, most gaming platforms rarely share this type of data. Companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo usually focus on player numbers, console sales, or revenue figures. They rarely reveal how much data their networks deliver to users.
Valve sharing these numbers gives a clearer idea of the actual scale of digital game distribution today. Steam is not just a game store anymore. It is also one of the largest global content delivery systems dedicated to gaming.
The rapid growth in data traffic also suggests a few important trends for the future of PC gaming.
First, game sizes are continuing to grow. High-resolution textures, cinematic content, and large open worlds require huge amounts of storage. As a result, platforms like Steam must handle massive download volumes.
Second, the rise of live service games means players download updates much more often than before. Instead of buying a game once and finishing it, players now stay in the same game for years while developers constantly add new content.
Finally, the data growth also reflects how strong PC gaming currently is. Even with the rise of subscription services and cloud gaming, Steam continues to attract millions of players.
If Steam is delivering 100 exabytes of data per year, it shows just how dominant the platform remains in the PC gaming market.
