Steam – Copy steam games to other PCs

steam

Some time ago it was very easy to copy steam game files. start the download, close steam and copy the files to steam/steamapps/common/.

But now this folder wont appear until the download has finished. It is in steam/steamapps/downloading/. Coping the files there wont solve the problem, because steam saves the progress in steam/steamapps/downloading/state__.patch files, which are not editable with a usual editor like gedit, MS editor or MS wordpad. Is there a workaround?

I want to copy the program files, not the progress in a game.

Best Answer

The following has worked for me on Windows without 3rd party tools.

First I install Steam in the new location (if it's not already installed), log in at least once, then exit. Then from the original Steam location, I copy over 2 things to the same relative directories in the new Steam location:

  1. The game's directory in \Steam\SteamApps\common\
     (should be the name of the game, roughly)
  2. The game's ACF file in \Steam\SteamApps\
     (appmanifest_APPID.acf where APPID is found like so)

Once those 2 things are copied over, log back into Steam and you should be set.

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