--- title: How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️ description: Steam delivers over 20 terabytes of game data per second by splitting games into 1MB chunks and opening six parallel connections to a mix of its own servers... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/how-steam-handles-an-insane-amount-of-downloads--ovi8eefus twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️ | daily.dev og:description: Steam delivers over 20 terabytes of game data per second by splitting games into 1MB chunks and opening six parallel connections to a mix of its own servers... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/how-steam-handles-an-insane-amount-of-downloads--ovi8eefus og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/ovI8eEfuS.png og:image:alt: How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️ og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- [Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis) [Watch video](https://api.daily.dev/r/ovI8eEfuS) # [How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️](https://api.daily.dev/r/ovI8eEfuS "Go to post") This title could be clearer and more informative. Try out Clickbait Shield for free (5 uses left this month). Steam delivers over 20 terabytes of game data per second by splitting games into 1MB chunks and opening six parallel connections to a mix of its own servers and CDN providers like Cloudflare. Updates are handled efficiently by comparing local chunks to new ones and only downloading changed parts, similar to a git diff. Download bottlenecks are typically caused by I/O speed, with SSDs significantly outperforming HDDs. Steam originated in 2002 as a patching tool and has grown into one of the largest CDNs on the internet. [#distributed-systems](/tags/distributed-systems "Check all #distributed-systems posts")[#steam](/tags/steam "Check all #steam posts") Mar 25 • 1m watch time Comment Bookmark Copy Share your thoughts Post Share this post [](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis) [Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis "https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis") 238 Followers • 1.3K Upvotes #### Would you recommend this post? Copy link Slack WhatsApp Facebook X New Squad Copy linkShare with your friends ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-steam-handles-an-insane-amount-of-downloads--ovi8eefus","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-steam-handles-an-insane-amount-of-downloads--ovi8eefus"},"datePublished":"2026-03-25T17:45:20.061Z","dateModified":"2026-03-25T17:45:34.857Z","description":"Steam delivers over 20 terabytes of game data per second by splitting games into 1MB chunks and opening six parallel connections to a mix of its own servers...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/suIfWt89z0E/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/suIfWt89z0E/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Coding with Lewis","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Coding with Lewis","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--St-eJIdL--/f_auto/v1728073102/logos/codingwithlewis","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/how-steam-handles-an-insane-amount-of-downloads--ovi8eefus","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"distributed-systems,steam","timeRequired":"PT1M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️","description":"Steam delivers over 20 terabytes of game data per second by splitting games into 1MB chunks and opening six parallel connections to a mix of its own servers...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/suIfWt89z0E/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-03-25T17:45:20.061Z","duration":"PT1M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/ovI8eEfuS","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/suIfWt89z0E"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Coding with Lewis","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"How Steam handles an INSANE amount of downloads 🕹️"}]} ```