How to downgrade games with DepotDownloader - How to play old versions of games the right way

[Rusty]

Intro

I made this post to roughly explain how to download and play an old version of a game that you own on Steam. This can help you out when a feature of a game gets removed, but you updated already and want to revert back to an older version. This is meant more to explain how it's possible, rather than a step-by-step guide. I'm sure there's better guides already on how exactly to do this, but now I already typed all this. This post is long enough already and I don't feel like writing any more, so if something is unclear, just search for "Steam DepotDownloader" on google and in the Steam forums and you will find a lot about it already...

Steam doesn't make this easy or give any hint that this is possible, but you can revert most games back to older versions and play them without ever updating. A couple things upfront:

- downloading older versions requires a third-party open-source tool called DepotDownloader. It should be safe to use, considering that it's open-source. I don't think it would be on Github if it was malware. But whether you trust this tool or not is of course up to you alone.

- You should be comfortable with the filesystem on your PC and know basics of how to use the commandline, otherwise this guide isn't really meant for you. Sorry that Steam doesn't make this easier, but this is the easy way for techies. There might also be a more "user-friendly" way with a nice GUI, but I don't know...

How-to Download and Play Old Versions of Games

First right click the game in your library -> Properties -> Updates -> Set it to "Only Update this game when I launch it"

Look up Steam DepotDownloader[github.com], this is the CLI tool which enables you to install an old version of a Steam game that you own. The Github page mostly explains how to use it (if it doesn't make sense look up a more noob-friendly guide). Only one additional thing to know: use SteamDB[steamdb.info] to get the depot ID for a specific older version you want to download, use that ID with depot downloader.

Once you installed the old version of the game follow these relatively simple steps:
- Create a desktop shortcut
- Restart Steam in Offline Mode
- Play the Game from the Desktop Shortcut

Additional Notes and Tips

Be sure never to accidentally play an old version of a game when Steam is "Online" or it will update it. I would recommend backing up the "old version" of the game by copying all files+folders in the games install location to another folder in a safe place that doesn't get touched by Steam. This way you don't have to re-download it, if you ever update it by mistake. You can simply copy the files+folders back to the install location and you will have the old version back. You can even use multiple versions of the game this way, just copy the files+folders of the version you want. If you want to frequently switch back and forth between new and old versions, I'd recommend making some shell scripts / python scripts to make this easier.

It all makes sense if you think about how Steam / offline mode and installation of games work. I know it's a bit technical and probably won't help most regular players, but I hope it's still useful to someone!

Just to mention a couple examples for why you might want to play older versions of certain games, here are some games that have content that removed in an update:
- GTA IV - Music was taken out in new version due to licensing expiring
- Mafia 2 - Same thing, music removed
- Tabletop Simulator - LAN mode was removed, newer version is online only

This stuff happens. Ideally, I'd recommend making backups of installation files of games you care about. An external hard drive is good for this purpose.

Obviously this is all kind of pointless for games that require some kind of proprietary backend server to work (for example Rocket League, PUGB, R6 Siege). You won't be able to play those with an old version, unless someone got their hands on the server software and figured out how to replace the official servers in the game's files. Although that sounds nearly impossible, it has happened for some older games...

Good luck getting your old games back

[rawWwRrr]

Make this into a guide, instead.

[Rusty]

Hmm, that's what I wanted to do at first. I'm probably just blind, but where exactly do guides for "Steam Forum" go? I don't see a "Guides" section for just Steam...

[The End]

Originally posted by Rusty:

Hmm, that's what I wanted to do at first. I'm probably just blind, but where exactly do guides for "Steam Forum" go? I don't see a "Guides" section for just Steam...

You can read about guides and how to here:
https://steamcommunity.com/guides

[Rusty]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but there's also helpful Youtube tutorials on the topic.

Youtube search: depotdownloader

The first video in the search results looks pretty good:
DepotDownloader - Youtube Tutorial

It goes through everything I tried to (poorly) explain. I think it should work. These kind of things are like trying to explain how to tie shows... a video is definitely the better medium here.

[Rusty]

Originally posted by The End:

You can read about guides and how to here:
https://steamcommunity.com/guides

I know how to make a guide for a game, but where do guides for Steam itself go?

[my new friend]

Originally posted by Rusty:

Originally posted by The End:

You can read about guides and how to here:
https://steamcommunity.com/guides

I know how to make a guide for a game, but where do guides for Steam itself go?

All you have to do is use this. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/editguide/?appid=753
AppID 753 is for Steam. But it can not be searched on Steam like regular guides tied to games/hubs.

[Rusty]

Ah ok I thought this was the right place to share a guide (didn't realize it's a Q&A forum), but that link is what I was looking for. Thanks!

[pascalbeats26]

Just out of curiosity, what happens when you update the game after playing the older version?
For example, in the recent patch, they fixed the xp gain in a custom setting. If we were to go back before the fix and level up, would the level be when its updated to the current one after?

[Rusty]

If you update a game after playing an older version you messed up and you updated your game.

But here is what you can do (in singleplayer games) to have 2 versions:
1. Downgrade game to the version you want.
2. Go to the game's install location and copy everything to a new folder which you can name "<game name> old version"
3. Update the game
4. Now you have two versions of the game. Play the new version by launching normal through steam. Play the older version by going into steam offline mode, then go to "<game name> old version" and launch the game's exe.

If you follow those steps be sure to make backups of any saves or config files, in case they are not compatible between versions.

It also obviously depends on the specific game. Which one are you even talking about (this is the general steam forum)? I'd imagine that in most online games, you won't be able to play an older version online, so you wouldn't be able to gain any xp. You would need the latest version to play on most multiplayer servers.

Using two versions simultaneously, depends on a game being singleplayer and savegames need to be compatible between versions.

[dek018]

I have a weird question: I'm recently updating to NVME ssd's from regular HDDs, so, I'm planing to move some of my games there; If I use the steam utility to move games I was told that it basically updates the game alongside it, but, if I do it offline, will it do so? My most treasured games are Skyrim and Fallout 4, and if they get updated, all hell will break loose (I already have like 3 backups of both games in case anything goes wrong).

[FOL | Snap1e]

aja

[Rusty]

Originally posted by dek018:

steam utility to move games

- First make sure your new SSD is formatted and you know which drive letter it has
- Set up a new folder on the SSD, where you want a Steam Library, for example "<driveLetter>\Games\Installed Games\Steam\"
- Set up that folder as a Steam Library: Steam -> Settings -> Storage -> Click on the + and add the new folder "<driveLetter>\Games\Installed Games\Steam\" as the location

This should work to move your installs without updating:
- Go into offline mode
- Library -> Right-click game -> Properties -> Installed files -> Move Install Folder -> Pick your SSD as the location
- Double Check in game properties that the game won't get updated if you go online

Considering that you already have backups of the game files, if something goes wrong, you can restore those by copying the game files to the new install location if needed.

---

Here is how you can move all data at once from one drive to another:
(note that I would not recommend doing this with your C: drive, only D: or other drives)
- copy all folders and files from your old HDD to your new SSD
- Rightclick windows start menu symbol -> Disk Management
- Change the drive letter of your old HDD to something else, then change the drive letter of the new SSD to the same that the old HDD had

I think that should work. However, I'm not sure if it can be done while the HDD is in use, it could be that you need to do this while booted from a USB drive, for example with Hiren's boot CD:
(you unpack the iso to a USB stick with nothing else on it, using Rufus, then to boot it you change the boot order in your bios settings)
https://www.hirensbootcd.org/
https://rufus.ie/en/

[blablaji]

Is there a way to specify where to download the files to?

Every time I've tried this I get "Depot download failed : error writing chunk for ..."
I want to try downloading to a folder outside my programs folder in case windows is messing with it

[Rusty]

Originally posted by blablaji:

Is there a way to specify where to download the files to?

If you check on the github page for depot downloader, you see a bunch of options and a description of what they do. One of those is the "-dir" option which lets you specifiy the folder where you want to save a download. The full command to use it should be something like this:

dotnet DepotDownloader.dll -app 730 -pubfile 1885082371 -dir "C:\Users\<yourUsername>\Downloads"

("Downloads" is just an example here and you can specifiy whichever path you want)

If you are getting errors, the only obvious troubleshooting tip I can think of is to check that you have the correct version of dotnet installed which is supposed dotnet 6.0 runtime.

What do you get, when you run this command in cmd?

dotnet --info

It should say something like "Version: 6.0.X" with some additional info in the output.

If that doesn't help, the next thing I would do is to search the Depot Dowloader Github "Issues"[github.com] for any keywords of the error you are getting.