阀: Delivering Content to 更多的 Than 125 Million Users

"阀 felt there’s got to be a better solution to deliver these updates to games, instead of just relying on FTP, 它应该是动态的,迈克·邓克尔说, who heads up business development at 阀, 他踢了2015年 内容交付峰会 在纽约. 结果是 蒸汽 platform, which 阀 developed as a way to replace FTP downloads.

阀 2003年推出蒸汽, and told users if they wanted to get gaming updates to Counter-Strike, 他们需要加入蒸汽.

"They pretty much crushed us,邓克尔说。, referring to the demand. Demand didn’t abate in the run-up to 2004’s release of Half-Life 2.

"In 2005, we actually launched third party games on 蒸汽,邓克尔说。, noting that the first third-party game they came out with was Rag Doll Kung Fu.

"In 2012, we released non-gaming apps,邓克尔说。, who also works on network operations and infrastructure, "and in 2014 we introduced live broadcasting into the client. We also released movies on top of the 蒸汽 platform."

This push to release movies, in addition to allowing users to listen to music in the 蒸汽 platform client, is part of a broader push to allow more home page personalization on Linux, Mac, 和窗户.

“我们有9个。.5 million concurrent players and 2 billion minutes played per day,邓克尔说。, 超过4,500条内容."

"Content ranges from 100 MB all the way up to 60 GB,邓克尔说。, adding that the newest Grand Theft Auto release was close to that upper end.

内容交付峰会 chair Dan Rayburn said before Dunkle's keynote that 蒸汽 had 125 million active users, but Dunkle said that number is already outdated. Dunkle stated the company isn’t yet ready to release the new number of active users, but teased that it was considerably higher.

Dunkle also said 阀 will finally release the much-anticipated 蒸汽 Box gaming machines and 蒸汽 Link game streaming device in late 2015. In addition, the company has a platform for trading, with 2.3 billion items traded since the inception of the 蒸汽 platform, averaging over 5.5 million items traded per day.

"阀 has already paid out $53 million to users producing content,邓克尔说。. "We’re a growing ecosystem."

2012年底, North America and Europe made up 80% of 蒸汽's regional markets, 邓克尔说, noting that southeast Asia is now coming on strong, requiring points of presence there.

“We currently use six different CDNs,邓克尔说。. “Geographic distribution is important to us.”

Dunkle said 蒸汽 has content delivery points of presence from over 260 servers, 在超过52个城市, 大于2.5真沸点能力.

"The strategy of having a mixed solution is beneficial to us,邓克尔说。, referring to the points of presence—mostly installed by 阀—and the use of the six CDNs. He then showed the network/content backbones on a graphic that showed traffic flows between points of presence.

Dunkle oversees the identification and relationship management of infrastructure partners including all aspects of contract development and negotiation—and, 在必要时, partner product commercialization—as well as strategic planning and implementation of 阀’s network in existing and new territories.

An audience member asked if 蒸汽 would be considered a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. Dunkle said that P2P had been explored early on, but that they discovered they couldn’t seed enough nodes to make P2P a viable option.

“Going forward, one of the reasons we used a mixed network is denial of service attacks,邓克尔说。. "And, by the end of the year, we expect to see a 100 GB game."