How Can I Transfer Steam Games to Another Computer?

So you downloaded a game from steam, maybe spent hours downloading it. Now due to some reason you need to transfer your steam game to another computer. Is it possible ? Definitely yes. And it is super easy to do so. In the following writing, we bring to you 100% working ways on how to transfer your steam games from one computer to another computer. The methods mentioned do work on windows 7 and above. Lets check them out !

What are we going to do exactly

For transferring games around computers, you should have some storage that is capable to house your entire game. So make sure you are having a hard-drive. Also we recommend keeping your steam credentials nearby. This is for making sure you have everything if steam requires you to log in again for some reason. Lets check out the ways.

How to Transfer Steam Games across Computers?

Method # 1

  • First up you will need to fire up steam and hit steam button in upper left corner of the screen
  • Then select backup and restore games

 

  • Select the option that says Backup currently installed programs.
  • Once done, you can now select the game you want to backup. You can also select more than one game
  • For sake of simplicity, we will be selecting one game
  • Once your game is selected, click next

 

  • Once your game is selected, you will be asked for a destination folder to save your backup
  • Make sure you select your external drive and make any folder on it and save the game on the folder.

  • Once that part is done, click on next
  • Now you are taken to a screen that says that “backup could be broken into multiple files…”. Make sure you select the DVD option
  • Now once that is done, you will have to wait for a while for the compression to take place

Your game is now being compressed to a smaller size than the actual game. This compression takes some time which depends on the size of the game and also your computers specs. Here, our game took about 10 minutes to get compressed.

Once the compression is finished, your task on the first computer a.k.a the source computer is done ! Now head to your other computer a.k.a the destination.

On destination computer :

  • Now that you are on your destination computer, fire up steam.
  • Once steam is loaded, go to the same backup and restore option as we did above
  • This time we will choose restore a previous backup option

  • Now you will see a popup screen asking for “location of the backup to be restored”
  • Make sure your external drive is connected to this computer. Select the folder in which you created the backup and click next

  • Accept the EULA by steam and click next
  • It will ask you “where to restore the backup”, you can select the default steam directory
  • click on finish to restore the backup

This step is the decompression step.This should take less than the compression step. Once done, you should restart steam

And look what ! your game is now available in your steam library ! You have successfully transferred your game from one computer to another. Now its time to game !

Hopefully the method mentioned above worked for you and you were able to transfer your steam games from your computer to another computer. But what if the method didn’t work ? Well there is another one.

Method # 2

In this method we will be copying the game folder itself. No compression or creating backups this time. And this method also works on origin games so that’s another plus. Anyway,

  • Open “my computer” and go to the following location

C > Program files (x86) > Steam

  • Once you are in there in the “steam folder”, search for the folder called “steamApps”
  • Enter in the SteamApps folder

The steamApps folder contains all the games that you have installed through steam, in their respective folder form. What we will do is copy the game we want from here.

  • Go inside steamApps folder and copy the game folder that you want to move to another computer
  • copy the folder to some external drive

  • Now unplug your external storage and plug it into the destination computer
  • Now browse to the same directory on the destination computer

C > Program files (x86) > Steam > steamApps

  • Simply paste the copied folder here. Make sure the directory is the correct one as mentioned.

Now you have copied the game. To have the game show up in the steam library,

  • Open up steam
  • Once opened, search for the same online which you just copied

  • Click the “Play now” or the “download” button
  • Click “next: button

You will now see a popup opens up as shown in the picture. It points to the directory where it will install the game. The directory is same as C > Program files (x86) > Steam > steamApps.

Since the game files are already present there, the steam installer will not download any additional files and recognize the previous files. The game will now be added to your steam library. Restart steam to have changes take effect.

Hooray ! The game is now present in your steam library. And you did not spend neither your internet nor much efforts in making the switch. Now you know how to move steam games from one computer to another in easy and simple steps

Summary

Steam is an online game library that lets users download and play games on their computer. These games can be backed up and installed on other computers which do not have an internet connection or some other issues. We hope that our guide helped you transfer your steam games from your computer to another computer. Happy Gaming !

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