Steam is a great platform to buy games, play and make new friends. Whenever you install a game on your Steam account it gets permanently attached to it. Then you can play them from any PC that has Steam installed. However, it will need to re-download and reinstall game(s) that aren’t present in hard drive of that PC. This process can be a pain for those who have bandwidth caps on their internet connection. But don’t worry, you can easily transfer your Steam games from one PC to another without downloading or installing them.
How to Transfer Steam Games to another PC:
Open Steam directory on PC #1
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\
You will find a folder named “common” and files with .acf extension. Copy them to your USB drive or whatever the mode you are using to transfer files to PC #2.
Install Steam client on the PC #2
Now begin the installation the Game(s) you wish to play on PC #2. As soon the downloading starts, pause it and exit Steam.
After that open the Steam folder on PC #2, it will have the same path as PC #1.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\
Paste the common folder and the .acf manifest files there.
Launch Steam client, login your account and open the games list.
Right-click the game of which you paused download in the earlier step.
Go to: Properties > Local Files > Verify Integrity of Game Cache
Once the file validation is done, it might download a few small files or Start the game without re-downloading the entire gigabytes of data. Enjoy playing!
How to move specific Steam Games to Other Drive:
1. Copy the game folder from Steam\Steamapps\common to another drive.
2. Open Steam Settings > Downloads > Steam Library Folders
3. Click Add Directory folder and then select game folder that you moved to other drive in Step #1
4. It will automatically detect and add games present in the copied Steam library folder.
Thank you Very Much!
So if I want get games off my gaming computer and put them onto my school computer will it still work because our computer won’t allow us to download applications such as steam so will the games still work without steam being downloaded
This was so helpful thx
Cheers that was great. Just like to add that you need to log off steam, then log on again for the games to be recognised
after transferring the games from C drive to D drive, can you delete the steam games off C drive that you transferred to D drive?