A question about steam....

[shifty89]

Hi there, i was hoping someone could answer a question of mine that numerous emails to valve havent. I am due to go to uni in a few weeks time and i am doing a wipe of my machine before i go, however i cant dl my steam folder to my machine again due to its rather large size and my rather awful dl limit from my isp. I keep seeing an option for backing up info on steam itself but what i want to know is can you back up your steam folder to a portable hard drive and then use the back up data to reinstall your steam games?

Also as a question for people to muse over, what would happen to all those games in the event that steam went under? Do you think you would get some sort of activation code to unlock your games from steam?

 

[gellert1984]

Yes, though I've never done so myself, I just redownload them.

Valve have promised that if they are ever at risk, each game will be patched to work in offline mode.

 

[ManiacEskimo]

I don't know about your first question, but VALVe has said they have a plan in place to "release" steam and, at least VALVe's, games bought on steam.

 

[Voodoomancer]

Also as a question for people to muse over, what would happen to all those games in the event that steam went under? Do you think you would get some sort of activation code to unlock your games from steam?

Offline mode.

Although Steam going under is like the US, China and Russia to suddenly deciding to build a utopian gold city on the moon... (ok, a bit extreme metaphor, but I'm known for those...)

 

[Nimbus]

Hi there, i was hoping someone could answer a question of mine that numerous emails to valve havent. I am due to go to uni in a few weeks time and i am doing a wipe of my machine before i go, however i cant dl my steam folder to my machine again due to its rather large size and my rather awful dl limit from my isp. I keep seeing an option for backing up info on steam itself but what i want to know is can you back up your steam folder to a portable hard drive and then use the back up data to reinstall your steam games?

Also as a question for people to muse over, what would happen to all those games in the event that steam went under? Do you think you would get some sort of activation code to unlock your games from steam?

Don't bother with the backup feature. Steam works by just copy/pasting the entire directory onto the portable hard drive.

I should know. I am using steam right now, despite the fact that I have never installed it onto this system.

 

[j0z]

Just copy+paste your entire steam folder to your portable drive, you don't even have to actually install steam again. That's how my steam is right now.

 

[shifty89]

thanks for the info, yeah i knew there was little chance steam would ever dissapear but it was something i just wondered about

 

[TimeLord]

I had to purchase a new computer recently and after downloading the Steam Client and logging in, it came up with a list of my purchased games, I just re-downloaded them.

 

[YuheJi]

Copy the steamapps folder under the main Steam folder. Then you could redownload the client (which is rather small) and just paste the folder into the new Steam folder.