P2P or direct download of games on steam client?

[eXquis1t]

Hello,

I would like to ask, how are games downloaded through steam client? Is It direct download or P2P download? Where I live is P2P forbidden and I will get banned. Is it save to use steam? :)

Thank you for your replies.

MB

[ReBoot]

It's safe to use Steam, yes. Steam doesn't do P2P.
Where do you live though? Are you sure it's P2P that's forbidden and not conducting piracy over P2P?

[Cathulhu]

Forbidding P2P would mean you'd not be able to play a Blizzard game, as Battle.net uses a BitTorrent based downloader. Sounds rather silly.

[eXquis1t]

Thank you for the reply. I live in the something like dormitory. We are using internet provided by university. And yes, it is silly. Because they do not want to deal with any legal issues, they have forbidden to use any P2P. They do not different between legal (like games) and illegal (torrent). It came to the point of buying myself private provider, but that can not be done either, the university does not allow them to provide services on the university ground. So I am stuck with this hybrid, useless internet. But thank you fot the good news, at least the steam is safe.

MB

[Tito Shivan]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

It's safe to use Steam, yes. Steam doesn't do P2P.

Just adding an exception to this:
Not every game in Steam downloads through their services. A few games (Specially MMORPGs that can also be played outside Steam) do the download and patching through their own game client. In those exceptions you might encounter P2P download systems.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by enot:

Why "Valve" won't upload via "p2p" ? As sales begin, the speed drops sharply. Even "Windows 10" started to use this technology.

That's BS.

Valve's content servers can saturate your connection.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2313407722

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2334197208

[Cathulhu]

Originally posted by enot:

Why "Valve" won't upload via "p2p" ? As sales begin, the speed drops sharply. Even "Windows 10" started to use this technology.

If you experience that, just change the download region to a less populated one.

Even right now i can saturate my 100MBit connection easily, without changing the download region, during the daytime in Europe.

So, no, Steam download servers are not overloaded. Problems with download speeds can have multiple causes, not all of them are the download servers.

Like routing, or your ISP selling more bandwidth than they actually have and then encountering more demand than they can actually meet.