Can you move Steam games from PC to PC?

[Carrot]

I live in Canada and have absurd monthly bandwidth caps and downloading a game say 16GB is a good chunk of my monthly limit. So I have friends that have games that I'm interested in playing with them and my question is:
Is it possible to grab the game data from their system, put it on a flash drive or something and then copy it onto my system...then go into Steam (after I've purchased the game as well) and get it to activate it as my copy by clicking download on Steam. Would Steam recognize the game in my folder (SteamApps?) and then just download the necessary data (essentially the same as the repair option when installing a program normally) to activate the game with my Steam information?

Otherwise it's going to cost me nearly $20 in extra bandwidth to download a $20 game. Not interested in paying twice.

Hopefully that's not too confusing,
Thanks.

[Richy]

Hey Gimpy,

The way I read your question, is that you want a steamgame of a friend and try and add it to your list; that is not possible, since it would result in 1 person only need to buy a certain game, and then just provide it for free to all of his mates, leaving steam with just a incrediblt small sales.

I hope that answers your question, otherwise, just let me know!

Kind Regards,


Messiah

[Carrot]

That's actually not what I was trying to ask. Both myself and my friend own the game (ie. we both have it on our Steam accounts) and he has downloaded it onto his PC. I can download the game right now on my account as well but that would be nearly 20GB in downloaded files. The ISPs here have put us in a box ...that's another story....and I'm trying to get just the bulk of the game data from his PC to mine and then have it activate with the copy I've purchased. So I don't have to download 20GB, just transfer it...and then activate my copy that I have purchased through my Steam account.

Again, both people have purchased the game. I'm just trying to save the time and bandwidth of downloading the game again, and instead transfer the bulk of the game data.

[Richy]

Ah, sorry, I misunderstoud you, my bad.
In this case, I'm afraid I have no idea if this is remotely possible, so I guess you'll have to hope that someone with this knowldge finds your topic, sorry.

[Jorge]

it should be

[Jorge]

go ahead and try it

[Richy]

I think the main question is, if you have a key-code that you have to enter AFTER installation, which would give it quite a big chance to succeed, but if not, you might get the 'this code has already been activated on a different PC', but like Fox said, you can always give it a shot!

[Jorge]

i really dont think theres any key-code to worry about. what should happen is that if you already have the game in your purchases, (which im assuming you do) it will show up in your library. if anything just let us know

[RankoR]

Well Im not sure if it is possible for transfer to other account, but your friend can make a backup copy of the game (Im too lazy to check how it is called in english) and give it to you.

Im talking about this option: http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/8430/steamfg.png

[Nacimota]

Not only is it possible, but Steam is specifically designed to facilitate this.

You can either ask your friend to perform a backup of the games you want using Steam's automated backup system and run said backup on your machine, or you can just copy the relevant game files over from your friend's steamapps folder to your own.

[Carrot]

Thanks guys we'll give it a try.

[Bert Grables]

If you move the files [GFC or otherwise] from the SteamApps folder that has them to the SteamApps folder that doesn't, you may have to validate them, but they'll work fine.

[_I_]

yes, game installs are in
program files\steam\steamapps\common

find the game in that directory and copy it to the other machine

[Bert Grables]

Not all game installs, the ones that aren't Valve or whatever are there, but Source games use GCF files that aren't in "common". Most other games, though, are in there.

I only know this because I'm stuck with a 200mb/day download limit, and it kills me to have to get a game overnight.

[Nacimota]

Originally posted by Mathieu:

Not all game installs, the ones that aren't Valve or whatever are there, but Source games use GCF files that aren't in "common". Most other games, though, are in there.

That only applies to Valve's older Source games like Team Fortress 2. Recent Source games (Portal 2, CS:GO, Alien Swarm, etc.) are indeed stored in steam\steamapps\common