"Steam users are pulling down 274 petabytes of installs and updates every single day," Valve revealed in its newly released Steam Year in Review for 2025, a number so massive the company had to translate it into smaller units just to make it comprehensible. Break that down further and you get 11.42 petabytes per hour, or about 190,000 GB of data flowing to players every minute.
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Steam's Download Numbers Are Almost Incomprehensible
Valve published its annual developer-focused Steam Year in Review report, and tucked into the final section are some of the most staggering platform metrics the company has ever disclosed. Steam users collectively pulled down 100 exabytes of games and updates throughout 2025, up from roughly 80 exabytes in 2024. That's a 25% jump in delivered data year-over-year.
To put that in context: one exabyte equals 1,000 petabytes, or one quintillion bytes. Valve clearly knew the figure was hard to wrap your head around, which is why the company translated it into daily and hourly breakdowns.
Steam 2025 download figures
Putting the Numbers in Perspective
Here's the thing: 100 exabytes is a measurement scale usually reserved for tracking total global internet traffic. Storing just one exabyte would take around 250,000 high-end home PCs. Steam pushed 100 times that amount in game data last year alone.
The daily breakdown makes it slightly more digestible:
- 274 petabytes of installs and updates delivered daily
- 11.42 petabytes per hour
- ~190,000 GB of data per minute
What most players don't realize is how much of that volume comes from updates and patches rather than fresh installs. Every background update to your library, every day-one patch, every hotfix adds to that running total.
Platform Growth Driving the Surge
Steam's concurrent user counts paint a matching picture. The platform hit 25 million peak concurrent users for the first time five years ago. Since then, Valve reports growth of around 3.4 million additional concurrent users annually, pushing the current peak to 42 million concurrent users.
More users means more downloads, more updates, and more bandwidth. The important detail here is that this growth looks steady rather than tied to any single title or event, suggesting sustained platform expansion instead of a temporary spike.
Steam concurrent user growth
Developer Revenue Also Climbing
The Year in Review wasn't just about download stats. Valve also disclosed that developer revenue payouts hit record highs in 2025. The platform's tiered revenue share system, rolled out in 2018, gives developers 75% or 80% cuts depending on total sales thresholds.
The revenue share paid out across all non-Valve games on Steam in 2025 averaged 76%. That number excludes any revenue developers earn from selling free Steam keys outside the platform, meaning actual developer earnings are likely higher in practice.
The stats land as Valve co-founder Gabe Newell reportedly took delivery of a new $500 million superyacht at the end of 2025, a vessel that includes a submarine garage, an on-board hospital, and 15 gaming PCs.
Source: Tech Yahoo
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How much data did Steam users download in 2025?
Valve'sSteam Year in Review shows that Steam users downloaded 100 exabytes of games and updates in 2025, up from 80 exabytes in 2024.
What is an exabyte?
An exabyte is a unit of digital data equal to 1,000 petabytes or one quintillion bytes. Storing a single exabyte would take roughly 250,000 high-end home PCs.
How many concurrent users does Steam have?
Valve reports that Steam reached 42 million peak concurrent users, growing at a rate of around 3.4 million additional concurrent users per year over the past five years.
