12TB Steam 'teraleak' spills over a decade of lost PC gaming history
A 12TB Steam data leak, circulating via BitTorrent, contains a nearly complete archive of game builds from 2003 to 2013, including unreleased prototypes.
The massive dump includes thousands of 'depots' representing what seems to be every version of every game uploaded to those old Steam2 servers, including public release builds and, in many cases, previously unseen pre-release, prototype, and playtest versions of popular titles published by Valve and third-party publishers.
The cutoff in 2013 coincides with Valve's transition from the Steam2 content distribution system to the current SteamPipe system. That move replaced a proprietary file distribution format with standard HTTP file trees, removing update approval bottlenecks and streamlining patches so they only reflected file differentials.
Ars Technica notes that while it is familiar with data leaks involving Valve's games, hardware, and Steam's operations, this weekend's leak goes far beyond anything previously seen. The data is being distributed on a tracker that Valve seems unlikely to completely purge from the internet.