Potential CD/DVD Game install WITHOUT Steam

[Wash]

Okay, so, to put a long story short, I have had a physical game collection for a while now, my first game that got me a Steam account was Empire Total War, got it on physical and the install button for the game, actually installed Steam and allowed me to install the game using a Steam key from there. These games do allow install from the disc itself as it was the norm at the time.

Now, the wrinkle is that I had been working on a retro computing system for some time, Windows XP era specifically, and I was wanting to run some of the older games I have on here, such as Half Life 2 GOTY Edition, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (original version) and the aforementioned Empire Total War. All of these games install steam rather than the game itself, but they do contain the game files.

So to put it short, I have been wanting to find a way to be able to install the game itself, just the files in the disc itself like it was a normal steam-free install. Since Steam is no longer supported for Windows XP, it makes it a touch hard to install.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Game installs on discs are up to the developer/publishers of said games.

[Brian9824]

Install to another computer and make a backup of the game and burn it to a dvd. However if it needs steam to run there is no way to circumvent it

[JacquesPatat]

the problem is that the developers wanted to make use of steam as a DRM, so bypassing it defeats the point of it. maybe a virtual machine or something. or else you can look at getting the game or games off GOG but of course that depends on the game of course

[Wash]

Originally posted by JacquesPatat:

the problem is that the developers wanted to make use of steam as a DRM, so bypassing it defeats the point of it. maybe a virtual machine or something. or else you can look at getting the game or games off GOG but of course that depends on the game of course

GOG is around as an alternative, sure, but my main problem is that I have several physical games which require use of Steam, which is impossible to do on an older operating system. The hope was a method to install the games that allowed Windows XP.

I suppose installing the game from one drive and transferring to another could work, but I much prefer a direct install from the disc, if such a possibility exists.

[Brian9824]

Installing from disc is basically pointless because the games would need further updates anyways

[Wash]

Originally posted by Brian9824:

Installing from disc is basically pointless because the games would need further updates anyways

Well, for many of these games, it was- believe it or not, quite playable at release, with certain exceptions.

Now, yeah that means the game wouldn't be updated to the newest version it had, but I would be perfectly happy with that as long as it was working, I just want to be able to install the game on a retro machine with the physical disc, or at the very least, try.

[Tristin]

I'm sure there are similar projects, if you look online. But most of them probably are approaching it as offline Steam(old ver if newer OS) setup, and on newer OS.

As many others mentioned, doing a CD/DVD with Steam is probably not the best approach, unless the game itself is DRM-free.

You could incorporate mix of adding DRM-free and non DRM-free games to Steam offline launcher. Burn each game as offline-Steam-launcher install game after all the updates are downloaded (this part is going to be more technical, but possible. also mind license legality). For older games, you will need to link it to a virtual machine run or such.

Compatibility is always going to be an issue, and you'll have more availability sticking to a newer OS, that can run virtual machine for old games.

[Draconic NEO]

Originally posted by Brian9824:

Install to another computer and make a backup of the game and burn it to a dvd. However if it needs steam to run there is no way to circumvent it

There are ways to circumvent it in some cases if there isn't external DRM, but it is less than straightforward and I won't discuss methodology or resources here.