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P2P Networking

We advise against using this. It may be changed or removed in a future update. This has been depreceated and https://wiki.facepunch.com/steamworks/SteamNetworkingSockets should be used instead.

Steam has a mechanism allowing you to send packets to another Steam user.

It's totally feasible to create a game's netcode using this system.

In the past we used this in Rust to send voice communications instead of bouncing it off the server. We ultimately stopped doing this because it revealed your IP.

Sending Messages

byte[] mydata = ... SteamId TargetSteamId = ... var sent = SteamNetworking.SendP2PPacket( TargetSteamId, mydata ); // if sent is true - the data was sent !

Receiving Messages

You need to set up a callback so you can authorize who can send you messages

SteamNetworking.OnP2PSessionRequest = ( steamid ) => { // If we want to let this steamid talk to us SteamNetworking.AcceptP2PSessionWithUser( steamid ); }

Then just call something like this regularly

while ( SteamNetworking.IsP2PPacketAvailable() ) { var packet = SteamNetworking.ReadP2PPacket(); if ( packet.HasValue ) { HandleMessageFrom( packet.Value.SteamId, packet.Value.Data ); } }

Your HandleMessageFrom function should look like this

void HandleMessageFrom( SteamId steamid, Data data ) { .. do stuff }

Further Reading

There are less garbage creating versions of some of the functions here on the SteamNetworking class.

Although the p2p stuff is easy and will work out for a lot of situations, you should look at SteamNetworkingSockets if you're planning to make a game with client/server architecture with 10+ players sending updates multiple times a second.

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