As the Steam Holiday Sale winds down it’s interesting to take a look at just how much bandwidth has been consumed around the globe downloading all the games sold.
Having lined up their downloads, over the last 7 days as of 2 January 2014, South African gamers managed to consume 119.2TB of data from Steam servers (0.1% of global Steam traffic), with an average download rate of 1.3Mbps.
To put this in contrast, below is a selection of country activity. Measurements are for the last 7 days as of 2 January 2014.
Steam Download Stats (Last 7 days as of 2 January 2014) |
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| Country | Total data | Average download rate | % of global traffic |
| USA | 22.4PB | 8.8Mbps | 21.2% |
| Russia | 9PB | 6.7Mbps | 8.5% |
| Germany | 7.3PB | 6.3Mbps | 6.9% |
| UK | 5.1PB | 7.7Mbps | 4.8% |
| France | 3.4PB | 4.5Mbps | 3.2% |
| Canada | 3.4PB | 8.9Mbps | 3.2% |
| Brazil | 2.5PB | 2.9Mbps | 2.4% |
| Australia | 1.8PB | 4.1Mbps | 1.7% |
| China | 700TB | 2.9Mbps | 0.7% |
| South Africa | 119.2TB | 1.3Mbps | 0.1% |
The table below shows how the entire African continent measures up against other regions of the globe.
Steam Download Bandwidth Used (most recent 48 hours as of 2 January 2012) |
Current | Peak | Units |
| Total Bandwidth Used: | 850 | 1,414 | Gbps |
| North America | 172 | 527 | Gbps |
| Europe | 375 | 704 | Gbps |
| Asia | 97 | 124 | Gbps |
| Russia | 139 | 147 | Gbps |
| Australasia | 40 | 42 | Gbps |
| South America | 19 | 54 | Gbps |
| Middle East | 8 | 18 | Gbps |
| Africa | 2 | 3 | Gbps |
| Other | 0 | 0 | Gbps |
So which games have proven most popular during the sale? The chart below shows the most popular games by current and peak player count.
With Left 4 Dead 2 given away for free during the sale, it’s not surprising to see it on the chart. Although only in a public alpha testing phase, zombie survival mod DayZ has proven very popular, entering at number 10 on the chart.
Steam – Top games by player count (2 January 2014) |
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| Current Players | Peak Today | Game |
| 460,677 | 556,231 | Dota 2 |
| 46,513 | 76,317 | Team Fortress 2 |
| 39,910 | 85,476 | Counter-Strike: Global Offensive |
| 37,364 | 61,883 | Left 4 Dead 2 |
| 34,335 | 74,172 | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim |
| 33,618 | 73,949 | Sid Meier’s Civilization V |
| 30,968 | 70,390 | Football Manager 2014 |
| 22,168 | 48,292 | Garry’s Mod |
| 22,164 | 35,599 | Counter-Strike |
| 18,973 | 43,086 | DayZ |
Which games did you pick up during the Steam sale? Let us know in the comments below and on the MyGaming forum.
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