Game Cache File

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Game Cache File (.gcf) is the storage mechanism used by Valve Corporation's Steam service to distribute hosted video games. A game distributed by Steam is not usually found in one gcf file, and can rely on others for dependencies: for example, Team Fortress 2 requires three GCF files for its own content, plus at least eight more files for the Source engine. GCF files are stored in Steam's "SteamApps" subdirectory, and extracted into live subfolders as games are played.

[edit] References

• GCF on Valve Wiki
• GCF on Steam Support Wiki
• GCF on Wunderboy: attempt by fans to extract content from GCF files
• GCFScape by Nem: third party tool for exploring and extracting GCF file content

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