How do you start local network game transfer?

[Xandumas]

I know it's a dumb question, but I've been looking on how to *actually* start the process of game transferring to my Steam Deck but haven't found out where to do so. I have both my PC Steam client and Steam Deck to beta channels and have the default setting on, but I've found no button or option to transfer it. I've even tried to download a couple games on my Deck that were already installed on my PC but it wasn't transferring.

I'm probably dumb, but how do I actually initiate it? My PC is through ethernet and my Deck is through wifi, both on the same router though, if that matters.

[martino]

It shouldn't matter if the game is installed in the Steam install folder or a Steam library folder. Look in your logs\content.log file for the keyword "peer" and if there are any failures with that.

[Gundox]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ThatsMav:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Gundox:

Yes! I have steam installed on my boot drive but all my games are all installed in another library on a RAID5 of mechanical disks for read performance. From what I have found, currently steam will not local transfer games from non default install location, which makes the feature far less usable in my opinion and situation.

Ah okay! Still weird cause I was able to transfer a game from my library to my deck, even though steam is on my boot drive. Though the library is a NVME drive

Interesting! I’ll have to give it another shot and see if I can find anything going on but I tried for a few hours last night and could only get it working by moving the game to my boot drive first. I will try a stand alone disk and see if maybe that helps.

[Xandumas]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von martino:

It shouldn't matter if the game is installed in the Steam install folder or a Steam library folder. Look in your logs\content.log file for the keyword "peer" and if there are any failures with that.

"[2023-02-17 19:03:17] Failed to start peer content server for app 268050 (Manifest 268053_3063496017212715396 is still encrypted) " From my log.

Ursprünglich geschrieben von banz99:

From my testings it seems to be working only if the game is installed in the first game library location of your client (C:\program files...), additional paths don't seem to be checked for now.

It appears this hypothesis is incorrect. I'm now transferring another game that isn't on my main Steam install drive. I don't know maybe it was just the game I was transferring. Hopefully Martino can figure out why it failed to start peer content

[Xandumas]

So I've test 4 different games on 4 different drives and I've reached a conclusion. I found it odd that The Evil Within was the only game that wouldn't transfer and I forgot one vital thing, it was installed on my external hard drive while the others were installed on my other drives (all of which are SSDs, one of them is an NVMe), I moved TEW to one of my SSDs and tried downloading again on my Deck and it transferred just fine, meaning that either my external hard drive doesn't meet a data transfer minimum or it's another issue, but regardless games that are installed on my SSDs transfer just fine while on my EHD it doesn't (which makes sense). I don't know if this was made on purpose for data transferring purposes or if it's a bug, but I've found it out. And no, it doesn't matter if the game is installed where Steam is installed or not. Hope this helps others!

[Gundox]

So I have tested some more configs. I had no problem transferring off of a USB dock with a drive attached to the host computer in addition to my local boot disk, but still cannot get it to work from my RAID5. And I’d just like to say this whole situation is still awesome despite running into these bugs early on. I saw it in the preview channel on the deck BPM last week and I was so excited! I am so thankful to Valve and the steam team for working in these amazing features.

In response to martino: I see some requests that return an invalid state response with the reason being Manifest (appid_xxx…. Is still encrypted) is there any known way to go about resetting it? I have double checked that all games are updated and the host PC is not doing anything during this time.

[ペクスイー シュ『Pekusuii | Shu』]

That would be awesome if it accepted transfer and activation if both computers are connected to LAN and one of them is Windows XP...

[martinooo]

Gundox, try validating game files in Steam on your RAID5 host, that should fix it. Real fix coming soon.

[Gundox]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von martinooo:

Gundox, try validating game files in Steam on your RAID5 host, that should fix it. Real fix coming soon.

I found martinos post earlier recommending that it did!! It’s great! Thank you as well!

[Sal-Mon]

I had to double check which games I had installed on my PC before transferring. Once I selected Install on my Steam Deck, my PC began transferring. The Steam Deck will not tell you that it's receiving the File Transfer (Which I wanted to suggest to Valve)

[csillver]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von mroddbox:

Stuck in the same boat as you, did you ever figure it out?

So didnt really figure out anything but blindly stumbled into it.
After setting my PC to Big Picture and turning on the beta and downloading that, I turned my deck to the beta participation.
After that I found my game that I wanted (DD0) on the deck and hit the install, it automatically started downloading. I wasnt sure it was taking it from the pc till I tapped the download icon on the deck, and the transfer from PC popped up.
Its just not clear, and a lot of us ( me) are over thinking it.
How very Mac of them.

[Madwolf]

hi
I have tested this with half-life 2 on my main computer and my laptop it started the data transfer over the network but it stopped transferring the data and started downloading the game data from steam servers half-life 2 was fully downloaded on my main computer

[TheGreatTave]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Madwolf:

hi
I have tested this with half-life 2 on my main computer and my laptop it started the data transfer over the network but it stopped transferring the data and started downloading the game data from steam servers half-life 2 was fully downloaded on my main computer

This is the exact issue I'm having. Some games (Tiny Tina's, Metal Hellsinger, Chrono Trigger) will begin the network transfer and immediately stop then will download from the Steam servers. Other games though, (Final Fantasy X, Kaze and the Wild Masks, Deep Rock Galactic) all transfered fine with no issues. I've validated files multiple times, idk what else to do.

[neotechni]

Coincidentally I couldn't get this to work on The Evil Within 2....

[TheDevilInVeil]

Hey, I hope this helpes someone, after all that time. But I couldn't get it to work either. At least in Gaming Mode. After Switching to Desktop Mode the games, already installed on my desktop, are transferred perfectly fine. My Main PC is connected to Ethernet and my Steam Deck is connected over WiFi.
As I said, I hope this helps someone. And apologies for (maybe) bad English.
Cheers