And besides, it isn't bandwith that valve is lacking for.
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/Its load management of what bandwidth they ALREADY HAVE AND ARE PAYING FOR. They are actually WASTING money since lack of adequate load management prevents them from using all of what they already have. Users get errors about no connections available to download when there's still plenty of bandwidth left in their region. Plus the store front end often has errors popping up (in big sales and releases) since the load management for that can't handle all the requests.
Even if they can't adequately serve game downloads (which isn't the case since they always have spare bandwidth in any regions any time I've checked, even during peak sales when I've gotten errors), the store front end should be TOP PRIORITY for having as close to 100% uptime as humanly possible. Thats pretty much the ONLY way they have to get money. If they can't accept orders and process credit cards, they can't get money. They can and DO lose sales over that. Even if the majority of people will come back, some won't. Plus, if its a new customer, would it fill you with confidence to visit an unknown storefront and have it error out multiple times when trying to buy something? You might decide just to hit amazon instead, trust them instead with your credit card, especially when amazon is cheaper.
This comment was edited on Dec 26, 2012, 00:49.