Steam – How to move an installed game from one Steam library folder to another

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I use (and have it much bigger) drive D: to store all my user data and games, but I have installed the Steam client on drive C:. When I was installing a first game (Warhammer 40000), I've chosen to place my library folder on drive D: and the game went there.

But now as I've got installed the second game (Portal), I can see that it was put on drive C: despite to the choice I've done previously. When I open Steam – Settings – Downloads + Cloud – Steam library folders, I can see both installation places in the list. Can I merge them into one?

I would even agree to use the default drive C: library (as I've replaced it with a symlink already). When I press to remove one library it says it can only remove empty ones.

Best Answer

Before January 19th 2017, there was no built in method to move games between libraries

Here is what I did though:

  1. Browsed to the steamapps folder that the game is currently installed into
  2. Copied the game folder for the game I wanted to move into the other Steam library (it's important you copy it; don't move it)
  3. Deleted the game within Steam (delete local content)
  4. Reinstalled the game, selecting the other game library

This finished "downloading" to the new location instantly, since the files were already present in the new location.

Important note on the folder structure of the destination library

It is important to note that as of trying this process on 2/11/2016 you cannot simply paste the folder into the destination "steamapps" folder but instead to a "common" folder within the "steamapps" folder.

For example if you created a Steam Content Library at "D:\Games\Steam" you will want to paste your game folder into "D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common" resulting in something like "D:\Games\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto V"

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