100 exabytes and 42 million online: Valve summarized the record results of 2025 on Steam

100 exabytes and 42 million online: Valve summarizes record-breaking results for 2025 on Steam

Valve put out a year-end summary. People naturally look at peak players, but the data about how much gets moved makes those player tallies feel tiny by comparison — the numbers sit in a register you don't normally use in conversation.

In 2024 users downloaded roughly 80 EB; in 2025 that climbed to 100 EB. To make that less abstract: storing 100 EB would need on the order of ≈250k high-end home PCs (yes, those monster rigs). When you shrink the timescale, the flow looks crazier still — about 274 PB/day, which works out to roughly 190k GB/min (or ~190,000 GB/min).

Cash kept moving too. Valve says it paid developers more than ever, citing the revenue-share system rolled out in 2018; the headline average for studios in 2025 was 76% — a number that reads well on paper but doesn't capture all the messy variables, like third-party key sales.

And then there’s the ending note that makes people pause: Gabe Newell reportedly bought a superyacht valued at about $500M, complete with a submarine garage, an onboard hospital, and fifteen gaming PCs. I don't know whether to be impressed, bemused, or just slightly queasy at that image.