On Thursday, SteamDB creator and common dataminer Pavel Djundik tweeted (opens in new tab) a brand new discovery in Steam’s code: a “peer content material” consumer/server mode. His takeaway, quickly confirmed by different programmers, was that “Valve is seemingly engaged on peer-to-peer Steam downloads on LAN.”
Peer-to-peer downloads might make you consider file-sharing software program like Bittorrent, however this function is not really about downloading video games over the web: it is the other. The “LAN” aspect focuses in your native community, that means one peer could be your desktop PC and the opposite might be your laptop computer or Steam Deck. After launching the hand-held gaming system, Valve is clearly desirous about giving gamers a approach to switch their sport libraries to it with out redownloading them.
For those who’re fortunate sufficient to be on a limiteless gigabit web connection, the LAN transfers will not matter a complete lot for you. However for gamers on slower connections or coping with ISP-imposed bandwidth caps, it might be an actual boon.
Contemplating the storage hogs (opens in new tab) some video games have turn out to be, you possibly can probably be saving lots of of gigabytes of web utilization monthly by copying video games over your native community as an alternative. That is a win for Valve, too: it means saving cash on obtain server prices and at the very least barely easing congestion.
In keeping with the programmers who’ve appeared into the brand new function, it really works now—however unreliably. The one approach to entry it’s to launch the beta construct of Steam in developer mode by including “-dev” to its shortcut, opening the console, and setting the “@PeerContentClientMode” variable on one system and “@PeerContentServerMode” variable on one other. I confirmed the code was there, however did not check an precise switch; because the function is not accessible in Steam’s UI but, it is clearly not completed.
“I’ve not gotten this to work reliably—the consumer/peer appear to not need to meet each other 100% of the time, or one thing,” Twitter person Nouv told me (opens in new tab). “Earlier than you place within the work to get this working: uhhhhhh it is in an actual early state (or one thing). I am seeing it make connections often nevertheless it provides up continuously and would not actually appear too efficient. Most likely must mature a bit!”
The function is certainly new—till I up to date to the most recent Steam beta consumer, the code did not seem within the console. So it isn’t some vestigial deserted function that is been kicking round Steam for years; hopefully meaning Valve is actively tinkering with it, and that we might see assist for it a couple of months down the highway. For those who personal a number of PCs and have a home wired for two.5 gig Ethernet: that is your cue for a maniacal chortle.