Installing a game to USB for use on multiple devices w/ 1 Account?

[CabbyMouse]

I never know where to put threads in these forums; if any administrator has to move this, please comment when doing so... it was really confusing the last time. I don’t know of any other forum that would be better suited for general inquiry.

What does the Steam client ToS say about installing a Steam game to a USB drive to be used on the same authenticated account on a different device? I recall specific games specifically being against making installations of games onto removable media, but I do not know the universal stance Valve has taken.

I wish to do this because I do not have stable internet at home, and will not have access to play games online in the foreseeable future. However, a good friend of mine has offered to let me use his guest PC at his place, as long as I don’t take up the space on the internal drive on the PC. I can use a dedicated external HDD(no room in the case) that would never leave the PC if needed, but I would like to have a portable installation as it would be cool to carry things besides Steam games from the guest PC to my main PC at home. I know of the feature to separate libraries to different drives, but that seems to be meant for saving space on SSD’s and such on a single PC.

It probably seems silly, and an obvious answer would be “Have you tried it?”. I know its possible, I just want to make sure I’m not stepping over some grey legal areas before I do this. I imagine that its fine as I’m still authenticating through Steam and only one instance will be played at a time, similar to how consoles do their digital releases.

[The Giving One]

They don't care if you install to an external, but it is not recommended.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=7418-YUBN-8129

It is not recommended that you install Steam to an external hard drive, due to potential performance issues.

Transferring the files between devices should be fine, but executing them from that external is not recommended.

[Snapjak]

Steam doesn't really care where a game is installed so you *can* install it to a USB drive if you really want, but it probably won't be too reliable.

There is nothing wrong with what you want to do other than externals aren't recommended by Valve. So just try it, see if it works for you.

[CabbyMouse]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

Transferring the files between devices should be fine, but executing them from that external is not recommended.

So just a performance issue then? Well, the setup will only allow for external devices anyway, so even if I left a drive there I couldn’t fix that.

And long loading times/visual performance issues is a small price to pay to be able to play online regularly. Thank you for the quick response!

[The Giving One]

If you do this, I would highly suggest you make a manual backup of gamesaves where games save progress in the game's own folder. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a savegame of your progress that you won't lose.

[Snapjak]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

If you do this, I would highly suggest you make a manual backup of gamesaves where games save progress in the game's own folder. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a savegame of your progress that you won't lose.

Gamesave Manager is pretty good for this.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by Snapjak:

Gamesave Manager is pretty good for this.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

You know, I keep forgetting about that. Thanks, Snap, you are right.

[CabbyMouse]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

If you do this, I would highly suggest you make a manual backup of gamesaves where games save progress in the game's own folder. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a savegame of your progress that you won't lose.

Originally posted by Snapjak:

Originally posted by The Giving One:

If you do this, I would highly suggest you make a manual backup of gamesaves where games save progress in the game's own folder. That way, if something goes wrong, you have a savegame of your progress that you won't lose.

Gamesave Manager is pretty good for this.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

Is this recommended even if the game will not be played aside from my main PC and the guest PC? The USB HDD won't be taken to any other device, just to play on guest and move files when needed.

[The Giving One]

I personally would recommend it, yes. Depends on how worried you are about your gamesaves.

Also, his antivirus program or other security software on his computer may not like that external being connected and games being excecuted from it when you do that, so you may need to address that concern also. Just be aware, please.

[CabbyMouse]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

I personally would recommend it, yes. Depends on how worried you are about your gamesaves.

Also, his antivirus program or other security software on his computer may not like that external being connected and games being excecuted from it when you do that, so you may need to address that concern also. Just be aware, please.

Alright. If I can transfer the saves locally, that would be fine. If not, I don't think its important enough to make a redudant system analog to Steams cloud service(I have a hard enough time keeping within data limits as it is, you would be surprised how much data constant cloud save uploads can eat up... FWP's).

Both me and my friend work in IT, I'm sure any technical snags will be resolved quickly. Thanks for all the help again!

[Snapjak]

You can of course disable a game's cloud settings entirely so it doesn't eat up data, if you want.