Copying steam game data from one computer to another

Question

My friend just bought payday 2 yesterday, and he doesn't want to download it because it will take a long time.

Let's pretend that there are two subject here, A and B. Both have payday, but only B has downloaded it.

A takes the game data from Steam/SteamApps/common on B's computer and copies it to the same location on his own. He doesn't know about the appmanifest so he doesn't copy it.

I asked him "Did you copy the appmanifest too?". He said no, so I uploaded my appmanifest (for Payday 2) so he can download it. I told him to place it in the steamapps file and he did.

When he restarted steam, the game was still not installed. How can he install it?

Probably because it's a game from your account? Why can't he just download it overnight? — rivermont, Jun 26 '16 at 01:50
@rivermont - Will B. not my account, he bought it yesterday. the file is from my other friends — BoomPow31, Jun 26 '16 at 01:54
You don't need the appmanifest file. If your friend has Payday 2 on his account and he copied the Payday 2 files from your computer to the correct place on his computer, then all he has to do is "install" the game. The Steam client will detect that the files are already there and will either download nothing or almost nothing. — , Jun 26 '16 at 02:17

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:09

I use a similar process to this when I switch computers (since re-downloading 100GB of games isn't exactly optimal).

Close steam on both computers
Copy the gamedata folder from Steam\steamapps\common to the same folder on the other computer
On the new computer, press download on the game. Make sure that the install location is set to where you copied the files.
Soon, steam will recognize that the files are already there, and will only download the files which are missing.
Right click the game and go to Properties > Local Files > Verify integrity of game cache.... This will make sure that the game has no missing or corrupted files.
Enjoy playing your game!

For more info, see here.

Copying steam game data from one computer to another

1 Answers1