Moving Steam Games

Gaming
1

I’m cleaning up my hard drives, getting ready for a new PC build, and I found that I’ve got my Steam library littered everywhere: C:\SteamLibrary, C:\Games\SteamApps, C:\Program Files\Steam, D:\SteamLibrary, etc., etc.
I started to sweat at the thought of manually backing up saved games and control inputs, uninstalling, and then going through the pain of redownloading everything again, but I found this tip:

tl;dr, copy your whole game folder to the new location, “delete local content” in steam, then “install game” to the new location. Steam is smart enough to discover existing files and, voila - your games have moved.

[edit: moving some of the bigger games, like Elite Dangerous, Batman Arkham Origins, does take some time, but a lot less than redownloading and reinstalling!]

6 Likes
2

I think you can also backup the whole game (not just the saves and control inputs). But with many games copying whole folder is maybe more handy :+1:

3

Doesn’t steam offer a cloud service?

I have uninstalled games and reinstalled them and the save fames are all there.

4

Not on every game…

5

Usually. But, let’s say, it still tries redownloading? Exit steam and go to the steam directory. Go into steamapps. See all those acf files? Move them out of the directory for now. Restart steam and you’ll notice your games indicate none are installed. This is correct. Install the game you’re moving and it should detect the files just fine. Then exit steam again, return the acf fiels, and start steam once more.

That should do it.