An archive of roughly 12TB of internal Valve development files dated between 2003 and 2013 has surfaced online, and dataminers have already pulled early builds of Portal 2, Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive out of it — along with prototypes of third-party games that passed through Steam in the same period.
The dump, nicknamed the "Steam2 Teraleak", was first flagged late last week by Valve dataminer Gabe Follower, according to Dexerto and Eurogamer. Follower said the material was not obtained through an intrusion.
No hacking involved, just verified that everything in Steam2 Teraleak was obtained via a publicly accessible endpoint. It's Valve's fault.
The files are Steam file groups known as depots, held on Valve's legacy Steam2 content delivery system, which packaged game content into older formats before the company moved to its SteamPipe infrastructure in 2013. Follower said that migration is why the archive stops abruptly at that year. PC Gamer reported that many pre-2013 builds had been considered lost media until now, and that Ars Technica judges the collection likely to have been assembled from several sources over time — a readme inside the archive sends "warm n good wishes to all hoarders who had stuff from this collection".
What dataminers have found so far
- Playable Portal 2 builds dating back as far as July 2009. Polygon reported footage circulating of a build with a bullet-time mechanic that slowed the game while players solved puzzles, and cut Cave Johnson dialogue about the Companion Cube.
- Assets for F-Stop, the scrapped Portal prequel concept in which players manipulated objects with a camera rather than a portal gun.
- A fully playable Left 4 Dead beta build dated June 2008, with an early HUD, a work-in-progress lobby screen and cut audio, including lines recorded for Zoey by Alésia Glidewell before Jen Taylor replaced her.
- An early CS:GO build from the period when the game was still a heavily modified version of Counter-Strike: Source.
- Third-party material: preservation site Hidden Palace has identified depots with obtainable builds of Spec Ops: The Line, Sid Meier's Civilization V, Mafia 2 and Grand Theft Auto 3, per Ars Technica, while Polygon reported fans turning up files tied to Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mirror's Edge, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age: Origins and Spore.
The Episode Three question
Researchers also found 3D models for the "Weaponizer", a weapon long associated with the cancelled Half-Life 2: Episode Three and shown in Valve's Half-Life 2 20th anniversary documentary. Eurogamer reported that in the archive it appears to have been repurposed as a placeholder asset inside Portal 2 itself. Polygon added that data strings referencing an ice gun have turned up too, matching reports that Episode Three was set in the Arctic. Dexerto noted it remains unconfirmed whether a playable Episode Three build exists anywhere in the dump.
Why the third-party files matter
A full depot list shared on Reddit runs to hundreds of games plus trailers, teasers, soundtracks, demos and game trials, though it shows only the names of the file groups and not what each contains. "Not to be hyperbolic, but this may be one of if not the biggest leaks to occur," wrote the user who posted it. Valve specialist Tyler McVicker argued the spread beyond Valve's own catalogue is what makes the situation legally fraught, writing that the archive "contains a significant amount of third-party content, meaning we are dealing with a dramatically more dangerous situation than if it were just some Valve builds".
Eurogamer drew a line between this and the cyber attack Valve disclosed earlier this month, in which European shipping partner CEVA Logistics was breached and hardware customers' personal details were exposed — that incident involved no Valve game data. With 12TB to work through, outlets expect it to be days before the community has a clear picture of the archive's contents.
Valve has not commented publicly on the leak.