Why does steam take up so much space?

[Muzzy (Dinohub)]

I hovered over it in file explorer and it says it takes up 166 GIGABYTES of space.
Why tho... I need more space

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Games and their files.

[Muzzy (Dinohub)]

i have 4 games

[Cathulhu]

Your account owns 63 games. And depending on which are installed, they can take up a lot of space.
Garry's Mod is a prime example, while the base game is not that big, it can get rather large due to all that mod content and additional assets.

[MatewoosH [PL]]

Yes, most likely space is taken by your installed games in "steamapps" folder. Also, since Steam client is basically internet browser, all pages you visit are stored in "appcache" folder which can take lot of disk space. You can clear all cache under Settings>Web Browser menu.
Steam client itself takes only about 560 MB.

Another thing to mention is that recently Steam got new feature called "Shader Precaching". For certain Vulkan ans OpenGL games those shaders are downloaded to your hard drive so that some games load faster/work with less stuttering. This can also take some disk space.

[Glimmer]

What games? GTA5 is something like 60GB on it's own and it's far from the biggest game on Steam.

[SanjayDarkside]

same problem here
so I have 170GB in C/Programs/Steam/steamapps/common

but steam itself takes 540 GB O.o
Mods? and Addons?

[Washell]

If you're looking in (un)install software/windows components, the 540GB is wrong.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Look directly at the Steam folder in the file explorer.

[ZΣПITΉ ︻ ̵̵̿ — ҉]

but what if the games are for example at D Drive, steam itself takes more then 9 GB while Terraria and garry's mod are almost 50 gigs at D drive, how can downloaded games take spacce at C and D at the same time?! :0

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

but what if the games are for example at D Drive, steam itself takes more then 9 GB while Terraria and garry's mod are almost 50 gigs at D drive, how can downloaded games take spacce at C and D at the same time?! :0

Do you have a library path on C? When you click install, you should have a selection to choose from if you do.

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by ¯\_(ツ)_/¯:

but what if the games are for example at D Drive, steam itself takes more then 9 GB while Terraria and garry's mod are almost 50 gigs at D drive, how can downloaded games take spacce at C and D at the same time?! :0

Because you told Steam to PUT them there? Why else would they?

Garry's Mod is a HUGE game, that requires not only the half life 2 / source engine and games resources to be installed, but also all those downloaded mods and maps, addons? I mean, duh? Of course they take up space.

[db2k]

I had a blisteringly high 645GB of space from Steam. Most of that space was from steamapps. Uninstalled GTA V and Garry's Mod and got over 200 gigs of space. I'm curious as to the total of Steam now.

[Crazy Tiger]

Originally posted by Ubuntu 19.10 =+Happy New Year+=:

I had a blisteringly high 645GB of space from Steam. Most of it was steamapps...

OF course they were, they're your games...

[nullable]

Originally posted by Muzzy (not russian spy))):

i have 4 games

Some games are quite large.

Originally posted by SanjayDarkside:

same problem here
so I have 170GB in C/Programs/Steam/steamapps/common

but steam itself takes 540 GB O.o
Mods? and Addons?

It's your system, why don't you browse the files to figure out what is what? We can't divine that from here based on the information you've provided. If you're not happy with the disk usage figure out what you can delete, you know like every other person has had to do since the beginning of PC time.

Originally posted by Ubuntu 19.10 =+Happy New Year+=:

I had a blisteringly high 645GB of space from Steam. Most of it was steamapps...

So are you saying Steam is just randomly using up space? And you haven't a clue what could be using up that space when modern games can be tens of GBs and some pushing 100+ GB.

[Crazy Tiger]

Brock, are you aware that 2 of the quotes you're replying to are from 2018 and early 2019?