Portable Steam games?

[zsecmmo]

I have a question to the community that I might already know the answer too. But given my situation I have no experience with this yet. Long story short I have moved to a new home in a rural area that has no wired internet available - And I refuse to go satellite - But I do have 15 Mbps at work. My question is could I potentially bring my laptop to work, download the game on my Steam account, get home and manually move that folder to my desktop, and be able to see it in Steam and play it fine? Or am I going to run into things like registry errors and etc. Thanks for any input.

[rikaine]

Hello,

As long as you have the files in your computer, you should be able to play most of the games in the "offline" mod.

start Steam
click Steam menu (top left corner)
select Go Offline...

Have fun

[Blueobelisk]

I would _guess_ you would get registry errors for most games.

If I were you, I'd:
>Buy a portable hard drive.
>Install Windows on it.
>Boot it up at work and download the steam games on it.
>Plug that in to your desktop at home.

And just make it your gaming HDD that you boot into when you want to game. It's inconvenient but it'll likely work. Just to give you ideas.

[endersblade]

I would _guess_ you would get registry errors for most games.

If I were you, I'd:
>Buy a portable hard drive.
>Install Windows on it.
>Boot it up at work and download the steam games on it.
>Plug that in to your desktop at home.

And just make it your gaming HDD that you boot into when you want to game. It's inconvenient but it'll likely work. Just to give you ideas.

This is about your best bet. Since the game isn't registered as being installed on your desktop, Steam won't recognize that it's there (as blueobelisk points out, it isn't in the registry), and so you won't be able to play it, unless you crack it, at which point you should've just pirated it anyway. Either suck it up and buy satellite, play it on your laptop, or go the portable/bootable HDD route.

[Coldkil]

No, it's completely possible to do so. I did that for years when i worked far from home and didn't have internet connection - so i just downloaded stuff during the weekend at home then brought the whole games on the other pc and played them just fine.

DISCLAIMER: every game may have a different behaviour. I never experienced issues but it's still possible that some games don't work or give errors.

Anyway, the procedure i used:
- Steam client installed on both pcs.
- download/install game on pc A
- go into the steamapps\common folder where all games are downloaded by default
- copy BOTH the game folder and the .manifest file; the latter is basically what tells the Steam client if the download is complete, the files list and if the game is installed.
- move everything on pc B in the same path
- start Steam client on pc B (even in offline mode) and you will see the game as installed normally.

As i said, every game behaves differently. Some install the DirectX or do the "initial setup" since they never ran on that machine. Some just work by default. Again, i never experienced any issue but still i cannot say that everything works flawless every time.

[ati87]

No, it's completely possible to do so. I did that for years when i worked far from home and didn't have internet connection - so i just downloaded stuff during the weekend at home then brought the whole games on the other pc and played them just fine.

DISCLAIMER: every game may have a different behaviour. I never experienced issues but it's still possible that some games don't work or give errors.

Anyway, the procedure i used:
- Steam client installed on both pcs.
- download/install game on pc A
- go into the steamapps\common folder where all games are downloaded by default
- copy BOTH the game folder and the .manifest file; the latter is basically what tells the Steam client if the download is complete, the files list and if the game is installed.
- move everything on pc B in the same path
- start Steam client on pc B (even in offline mode) and you will see the game as installed normally.

As i said, every game behaves differently. Some install the DirectX or do the "initial setup" since they never ran on that machine. Some just work by default. Again, i never experienced any issue but still i cannot say that everything works flawless every time.

That worked with non pirated games?

Steam by itself is DRM you know, what would be the point of having DRM if you could just move games from computer to computer without any checks to see if they aren't pirated or not espacilly since you're sending it to another computer.

Games like WoW may work (never tried) but that's account based so their is no chance for piracy

[Coldkil]

That worked with non pirated games?

Steam by itself is DRM you know, what would be the point of having DRM if you could just move games from computer to computer without any checks to see if they aren't pirated or not espacilly since you're sending it to another computer.

Games like WoW may work (never tried) but that's account based so their is no chance for piracy

Yes, it simply worked. I played all Sants Row games and an handful of Visual novels, Witcher 1 and 2, Darksiders 1 and 2. Plus somethign else i don't remeber - it literally saved me during the years i was working in the middle of the mountains.

It's been a couple of years that i moved from there. So if something changed in the meanwhile, i don't really know.

[ati87]

Yes, it simply worked. I played all Sants Row games and an handful of Visual novels, Witcher 1 and 2, Darksiders 1 and 2. Plus somethign else i don't remeber - it literally saved me during the years i was working in the middle of the mountains.

It's been a couple of years that i moved from there. So if something changed in the meanwhile, i don't really know.

Not sure about the others but Witcher 1 and 2 shouldn't have DRM byitself, in this case Steam may function as a extra DRM but that's on Valve and I doubt it effects the game itself.

So it could be from case to case depending on what kind of DRM the game has, looking at some google results Saints Row also potentially doesn't have DRM so I wouldn't be surprised if it worked with some of those games.

IN the end if it's a question of DRM or not than it's not a reliable way to play games.

[Coldkil]

Not sure about the others but Witcher 1 and 2 shouldn't have DRM byitself, in this case Steam may function as a extra DRM but that's on Valve and I doubt it effects the game itself.

So it could be from case to case depending on what kind of DRM the game has, looking at some google results Saints Row also potentially doesn't have DRM so I wouldn't be surprised if it worked with some of those games.

IN the end if it's a question of DRM or not than it's not a reliable way to play games.

Yeah, basically. If a game has an always online DRM, i don't think it would work anyway independently from the method you use to play. Anyway you can safely move the game between the two machines after you've downloaded on one of them and the Steam client will recognize them as installed normally. If there's anything else in the middle, that's not a STeam issue.

Ah, also i think you need to do at least one login on boht machines. You cannopt copy a game on another machine with a different Steam account because it won't work (the .manifest file is doing the thing).

[Vespian]

That worked with non pirated games?

Steam by itself is DRM you know, what would be the point of having DRM if you could just move games from computer to computer without any checks to see if they aren't pirated or not espacilly since you're sending it to another computer.

Games like WoW may work (never tried) but that's account based so their is no chance for piracy

There's invasive DRM and passive DRM. Not all DRM are equal. Steam has never tried to limit de consumers ability to play a game, that's usually on the developer of the game. The fact that Steam allows you to play games offline and the only element of actual DRM that it utilizes is the fact that you don't own the game, so you'll have to go through Steam to verify access once to download it, makes it a very passive form of DRM.

[ati87]

There's invasive DRM and passive DRM. Not all DRM are equal. Steam has never tried to limit de consumers ability to play a game, that's usually on the developer of the game. The fact that Steam allows you to play games offline and the only element of actual DRM that it utilizes is the fact that you don't own the game, so you'll have to go through Steam to verify access once to download it, makes it a very passive form of DRM.

irrelevant tot the question.

DRM= DRM in this case

[Vespian]

irrelevant tot the question.

DRM= DRM in this case

No, it's completely relevant; You can play games offline with steam and migrate data from a device to another, freely.

[Coldkil]

No, it's completely relevant; You can play games offline with steam and migrate data from a device to another, freely.

To add on this - on the "offline" machine you just need a first login with your account. Then you can stay in offline mode indefinitely and bring games from one machine to another since it's the same account and you won't have license issues.

[Yunru]

In case something doesnt work, you can always use a crack. If you own some game that needs you to be always online, this is a good option.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always-on_DRM