A massive cache of Steam data dating from 2003 to 2013 has been made public after Valve left an endpoint to its legacy infrastructure accessible. Archivists extracted between 12 and 13 terabytes of content, which includes internal Valve projects and third-party game builds.
According to Tom's Hardware, the archive consists of old Steam content-server data from the platform's transition from Steam2 to SteamPipe. Valve used proprietary NCF and GCF formats during the Steam2 era before moving to a standard HTTP file-tree system around March 2013. The leak is described as a preserved time capsule from a period when Valve was a much more active game developer.
Among the most notable finds are assets from the long-canceled Half-Life 2: Episode 3, including an early weapon asset. The Verge reports that content cut from Portal 2 and a build of a game called F-Stop, set in the Portal universe but built around a camera mechanic, have also been discovered. Modders have reconstructed a playable Portal 2 beta from July 2009, when the game was in its scrapped Core Hub era.
Left 4 Dead fans unearthed an early build from June 2008 featuring a different HUD, cut voice lines, altered map sections, and unfinished assets recycled from the Terror Strike mod for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.
The leak also includes early versions of Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Mirror's Edge, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Dragon Age: Origins. Because of the archive's massive size, the full extent of its contents is still being explored.