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According Valve’s Annual Steam ReviewThe PC gaming giant delivered 100 exabytes of data to its customers in 2025. That’s an increase of 20 exabytes compared to 2024, and while “20” may seem small, the “exabytes” portion is where things really get out of hand.
One exabyte is equivalent to one quintillion (1018) bytes, a number made up of 18 zeros. That’s 1,000 petabytes. That’s a million terabytes. That’s one billion gigabytes. That’s a trillion megabytes. That’s… an insane number.
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I’m not a mathematician and it’s getting really difficult to understand these huge numbers. Let’s say you’ve been shopping for 10TB hard drives for the past few years. Were you able to buy 10 million of them? That’s the amount of storage you would need to hold 100 exabytes.
Assuming you have 10 million 10TB hard drives in your hands, you can comfortably store your music collection, consisting of approximately 12 billion songs. I’m shaking my head in disbelief as I write this.
Valve is emphasizing the growth of its Steam user base as a reason for its massive data delivery expansion. The PC gaming platform reached 25 million concurrent users for the first time in 2020, and has grown by approximately 3.4 million users each year to reach a peak of 42 million concurrent users in 2025.
In 2024 we delivered around 80 exabytes to customers, and in 2025 that number increased to 100 exabytes. It’s hard to wrap your head around such a large number, but just for fun: Steam users average 274 petabytes of installs and updates per day, or 11.42 petabytes per hour, which is about 190,000 GB of data per minute.
Valve
As Steam has grown so dramatically, it has been increasingly criticized for its perceived anti-competitive and greedy positioning, not to mention encouraging underage gambling with loot boxes.
A major class action lawsuit originating in the United Kingdom accuses Steam of using its market dominance to retain users while manipulating prices. Steam’s actions are alleged to limit the potential of competing platforms like epic games and GOGO.
It’s worth noting that a 30% commission rate is pretty standard in the industry, and Steam doesn’t exactly force you to buy games on its platform. Turns out it’s the best place to do it.
It’s also worth noting that Steam introduced higher revenue share levels of 75% and 80% in 2018, which, as far as I know, is unmatched by any other major platform. In 2025, this led to the average payment to developers being 76% of revenue.
Windows Central’s take on Steam’s 2025 year in review
Steam isn’t perfect, but it sure is a convenient way to find, compare, buy, and modify games to play alone or with friends. It is clear from the astronomical figures shared by Valve that I am not alone in these opinions.
It’s not unexpected that Valve will be attacked from various angles, and some of these claims hold up. Loot boxes certainly seem like a game of chance. But going after Steam for providing a generally excellent experience for gamers. and developers seems a bit far-fetched.
Valve remains a private company under founder and CEO Gabe Newell, allowing it to operate without pressure from investors and shareholders. No one knows what the company will look like after Newell leaves, but I know I’m not the only one who hopes it retains its core values.
I want to know what you think about Steam’s 2025 year in review!
Were you surprised by Steam’s 100 exabyte data delivery figure by 2025? Did you expect it to be smaller? Bigger?
I would also like to know your opinion on Valve and their ongoing lawsuits. Do you think they are fair? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments section!
Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your ideas and discuss our latest news, reviews and more.
