Thursday, Pavel Djundik, SteamDB creator and regular data miner murmured (opens in new tab) A new discovery in Steam’s code: “peer content” client/server mode. His point, which was quickly confirmed by other programmers, was that “Valve appears to be working on peer-to-peer Steam downloads on his LAN.”
Peer-to-peer downloads might make you think of file-sharing software like Bittorrent, but this feature isn’t actually about downloading games over the Internet, it’s the opposite. The “LAN” element focuses on the local network. So one peer could be a desktop PC and the other a laptop or Steam deck. After launching its handheld gaming system, Valve is clearly interested in providing a way for players to transfer their game library without having to re-download it.
If you’re lucky enough to have an unlimited gigabit internet connection, LAN transfers aren’t that important. But for players on slow connections or dealing with bandwidth caps imposed by their ISP, this can be a huge boon.
Consider storage pigs (opens in new tab) Depending on the game, copying the game over your local network instead could save you hundreds of gigabytes of internet usage per month. This is also an advantage for Valve. This means you save money on download servers and reduce congestion.
Programmers who have researched this new feature say that it now works, but is unreliable. The only way to access it is to add “-dev” to the shortcut, open the console and set the “@PeerContentClientMode” variable on one device and the “@PeerContentServerMode” variable on another to Launching a beta build of Steam in developer mode. I have verified that the code exists, but have not tested the actual transfer. This feature is not yet accessible in his UI on Steam, so it’s clearly not finished.
“I haven’t gotten this to work reliably. Clients/peers don’t seem to want to see each other 100% of the time,” said Twitter user Nouv. told me (opens in new tab)“Before doing any work to get this to work: Hmm, it’s in a really pristine state (or something). I see it establishing connections occasionally, but frequently giving up and It doesn’t seem very effective in practice, probably needs to mature.Hey!”
This feature is definitely new. The code didn’t appear in the console until I updated to the latest Steam Beta client. In other words, it’s not a vestige of abandoned features that have been around for years on Steam. Hopefully that means Valve is actively tinkering with it and hopefully we’ll see support in the next few months. If is wired: This is the signal for maniacal laughter.
