STEAM Cache Files

VirtualForce

VirtualForce

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I've seen it with a couple of games lately, does STEAM no not allow you to copy game cache files between two sources? I've tried to copy from my desktop to my laptop, but it "discovers" the files, then ignores it and downloads the whole game.... I used to do this lots of times.... I've made sure the game cache dir is correct, I mean it finds the files.

I normally just copy the game dir....will try the backup thing....donnerse loadshedding atm. Thought I'd play some Icewind Dale EE, but no.... and yes, "first/second world problems", I know and I dont care.

Apparently you still can: here and here
 
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Yes this confused and frustrated me as well for a long time until I figured it out. It still works, they've just changed how it works and its actually much better now. I download on another pc and transfer games all the time and it works beautifully.
1) transfer the game directory into the steam > steamapps > common folder like normal.
2) you have to then also transfer the .acf file into the steam > steamapps directory.
unfortunately the .acf is the product number so you have to go into the steam store page to find out what it is. (It's the numbers at the end of the store page's URL)
ie The url for Assassins creed black flag is http://store.steampowered.com/app/242050/
so you will have to transfer 242050.acf.
3) shut down stream completely and restart and the game will be sitting in your library ready to play. You don't need to click install, You don't need to do anything else, it's just there and ready to play which is so nice.
This is great for transferring your entire library because you don't need to install each game separately. Just transfer all the game files as well as all the .acf restart steam and you're good to go.
 
When did this change guys? I have been transferring game cache files for years without an issue. I have used both the backup facility as well as just the cache without problems. That's even how I installed the new Mortal Kombat. Did they change it in a recent update?
 
Yeah, I gotta say I haven't encountered this either. Did it about 1-2 weeks ago no issue. Discovers files, then usually just redownloaded like 10-50MB.

Are you guys by any chance in the Steam beta participation?
 
It started a couple of months ago- around the same time that steam changed their site around. I download all my games on one pc, which I leave on over night, and then transfer them to my gaming PC, and being a compulsive game-buyer-holic I do this a lot. What I found is that some games were installing normally, but if I was transferring 10, maybe 6 or 7 wouldn't install properly. The game files would be there, but it would try download them again, and it doesn't matter what I did, it just didn't want to see them.
 
Every now and then, even following these steps, you'll still need an update.

I've seen it go 0/2400mb (or something), it'll download the first 10mb, then detect the rest.
 
murfle said:
Every now and then, even following these steps, you'll still need an update.

I've seen it go 0/2400mb (or something), it'll download the first 10mb, then detect the rest.
Click to expand...

it wasn't consistent. sometimes it would download a little and then find the rest, but more often than not I would come back later and it had downloaded 500mb or something stupid and still hadn't found anything. At least by transferring the .acf file it worked consistently.
 
ave said:
It started a couple of months ago- around the same time that steam changed their site around. I download all my games on one pc, which I leave on over night, and then transfer them to my gaming PC, and being a compulsive game-buyer-holic I do this a lot. What I found is that some games were installing normally, but if I was transferring 10, maybe 6 or 7 wouldn't install properly. The game files would be there, but it would try download them again, and it doesn't matter what I did, it just didn't want to see them.
Click to expand...

I have to say, this sounds very weird. I use a Telkom mobile 10Gig+10Gig account, meaning that I have maximum 20Gigs every month with which to download, update, browse, everything. I am forced to ask friends and family for Steam files on nearly a weekly basis. 9 times out of 10, I will simply get the cache files and then have Steam detect them manually, the rest of the time I will use backups. I've probably had two games that refused to install from the files and that was probably because the files I had were out of date. I literally have hundreds of Steam games and plenty of those have been installed this way. Mortal Kombat X, which I expected to be particularly troublesome, even installed fine from cache files. I installed that about two weeks ago.

I know that if you start an install before moving the files into SteamApps then Steam will want to download the entire thing., but otherwise it shouldn't be a problem. If you are still having problems with these installations, it may be a PC-specific issue or something strange with Steam, a bug maybe?
 
ave said:
it wasn't consistent. sometimes it would download a little and then find the rest, but more often than not I would come back later and it had downloaded 500mb or something stupid and still hadn't found anything. At least by transferring the .acf file it worked consistently.
Click to expand...

Most the time, ya... That 10mb thing I mentioned was with the acf. We were trying to do this, and my friend couldn't understand why I call Steam "A delicate beast" until they saw it for themselves...
 
I just bought Modern Warfare 2 (im a sucker for co-op and recently mate saw his physical copy cd key becomes steam key), and i used my *cough* test version to move files to steam. Teamviewered into my home machine, copied files to steamapps/common, deleted my exe's hehe, and its just "downloaded" about 10gb in 3 minutes. So non-beta definitely seem to still be working as it always has been. Sorry to hear yours is giving issues on occasion :/
 
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