Can someone explain this to me.

[A Regular Italian Plumber]

Why does verifying game cache (checking if files are there and uncorrupted) take 2 minutes, but if I dare to move the game to another location then have steam rediscover the game files, it takes upwards of two ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hours...

[Scribbles]

So I actually ran into this while developing Game Pipe (on Greenlight), which you might find useful. There's a github link to download it now on the bottom of the greenlight page.

The issue is, if you move the games directory from Steamapps\common from one library to another, the appmanifest_*.acf file in the steamapps folder needs to be moved while Steam is closed.

If you don't move the acf file at all, then Steam doesn't know where you moved the game to, and assumes the entire game directory has been deleted, so it redownloads when you verify.

Steam keeps the acf file in memory while it's running, so if you move it while Steam is running, then verify the game cache, your game will re-download to the previous location.

Also, when shutting down, Steam will write out all of the acf files from memory to disk. So even if you move the acf file and restart Steam, it will restore the acf file in the old location (leaving you with two acf files for a given game). The order of your libraries determines which of the identical acf files will get loaded first, and whether you have a fully installed game, or a game missing it's Steamapps\common directory.

Also, some of my acf files sometimes had absolute paths in them for the InstallDir, which should be shortened to just the name of the game directory. I don't know if this is something I did sometime while developing, or if it's an older format used by Steam.


Probably where you're going wrong, is that the annecdotally easy way of moving games is to move the game folder, then "uninstall" the game in Steam, then reinstall it to the new library. Verifying the Game cache is likely just redownloading the game.

But seriously, try out Game Pipe. It's much simpler :)

[NotAgain!!!!!]

Hmm never noticed that. Mine usually depends on what game and how big it is. GTA V usually takes a good hour, while Rocket League, takes only 30 minutes, if that. So I'm curious too.

[A Regular Italian Plumber]

Any clue as to why this process which has worked hundreds of times for me (ive changed PCs alot in 10+ years) decided this time to delete 50+ gigs of data forcing a total re-download after taking an hour "discovering" files?

[A Regular Italian Plumber]

I also think you misunderstand my question.

Im not verifying the game cache after moving the entire game.
Im moving the game, going to install then selecting the directory that I moved the files to. This doesnt do a regular verify game cache process, it attempts to reinstall the game, notices the files are already there, then checks the integrity of the folder to see if anything else is needed.

In theory its the exact same process but one takes about 4 times longer.

[Scribbles]

Ok, so you followed the Move->Uninstall->Reinstall method? If it's literally downloading everything you moved, you should make sure you moved the games to the correct location ("library\steamapps\common"). If you didn't move the games to the correct path, then steam won't find anything during discovery, if you navigate to the library, it will probably be pretty apparent if this happened.

I honestly haven't used this method for transferring games for 4 or 5 years. If you move the appmanifest_*.acf file with the game, you can avoid the "Install" step entirely, which made life much much easier when you could only select one game at a time in Steam. Moving the acf file with the game directory is how I've done it for years, and I built Game Pipe to automate the process for me, and just recently got it polished enough to launch.

[A Regular Italian Plumber]

I repair computers for a living, im fairly sure I can handle moving a single folder between two locations... And there would be nothing to "discover" if it was flat out the wrong location. This is just steam being ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash.

I also literally JUST did this exact same process for Dragon Age inquisition ( I have a small SSD I need to swap games out on) and guess how long it took origin from clicking "download" to being able to play. Roughly 12 seconds.

I repeat...

Why does it take steam hours to do something that shouldnt take more than a few seconds to a few minutes?