Multiplayer Question: Can people download custom content from a website through Steam

[HalfBob42]

In the past, downloading custom maps has been in a pain in the ass because servers were only able to give a small amount of bandwidth for map downloading.

It seems like some welcome screens on servers with Steam are connection to the WWW. Is this the case, and if so, can people connect a website with the custom content to Steam so that when logging onto a server you get the stuff quickly from a website instead of the server?

 

[pumako]

I've seen this in some servers in Day of Defeat. The custom stuff gets downloaded very fast.
So yes its possible.

 

[Vinnie_NL]

I hope it will be used often, I've had I few times when I finally completed the download and enter the server I play a minute and then the server switches again to a map I don't have, and that's annoying. But on the other side, some games don't even have an option like this, the only thing you get is 'map not found' like BF1942.

 

[Gotter]

On the CS server I am an admin on we have a HTTP download. It's quite simple to setup apparently. The only problem with it is that it takes -MASSIVE- amounts of bandwidth if you have a server that has alot of custom maps like we do. I think our HTTP download server generates something along the lines of 40GBs a month. It's certainly not something a server with limited funding can do easily.

I would assume that the same will apply for HL2. If not, someone will create a plugin for it.

 

[Dirtball]

Yeah I've seen the HTTP downloading thing. It reall helps out on making the downloads quick. But I could see it eating your bandwidth up really fast.