Games
Avoid to content
Image: Mark Hachman/ IDG
To say the least. I try to save as much data as possible. Constantly have been and always will be the case. When I can get a file directly from you guys instead of the Internet, I always take advantage of it. Valve’s Steam service has delivered on a promise that Microsoft has neglected to fulfil for a long time.
You may now “download” a Steam game to another computer and play it from there. When customers upgrade their PCs, buy Steam Decks, or just live in households with many PCs, this feature becomes increasingly crucial.
Is the Steam Deck something you like using? If so, the ROG Ally is a powerful option worth considering.
Comcast has been driving me crazy for years with their ever-increasing prices and approximative data cap, both of which may be eliminated if only there were more rivals in the market. Our four-person West Coast household is subject to a monthly data cap of 1.2 terabytes, whereas customers in some Northeast areas where Comcast competes with Verizon’s unmetered FiOS receive free service. This seems like obvious price gouging to me; please don’t try to convince me otherwise.
Since games frequently consume more than 100GB of data, “purchasing” a game on Steam may also come with a potential overage penalty. Comcast charges me $10 for every 50GB of data over my monthly limit. (Other ISPs have alternative pricing methods and overage rules). One task I dread at the end of each month is dealing with my information cap.
But today, steam really helps out.
The use of steam drastically simplifies the process. If you are not already at the Downloads page, navigate to it using the settings menu (accessible via the tiny “equipment” symbol on the home page or the Downloads page). You’ll find “Game File Transfer over Local Network” towards the very end of the long list of available options. (This is a bit distinct than just building another Steam folder and library, which may be done utilising this tutorial).
The option to “permit transfers to/from my own devices” should ideally be enabled, and it should operate. Both computers must be running Steam and connected to the same network for this to function. However, on my maker, that option was ineffective, and the more preferable “Allow transfers to/from any user” was the only one that produced any results.
That option is somewhat risky because any devices connected to your wireless or wired network may download Steam games, but it’s probably not going to be a big deal. You may also set it so that only your Steam friends can see it. If you’re afraid, you may always make adjustments after the transfer completes, or turn off transfers entirely.
Both PCs should display a banner when a download begins, indicating that the file is being obtained from a different computer rather than the Steam servers. A number of factors, including the speeds of both computers, the disc, the network, and so on, determine how quickly files may be transferred. At first, Steam recommended a maximum connection speed of around 100 MB/s (or 800 Mbits/s). About half of it was visible to me during a test run in my workplace.
That’s fantastic in my book. I like this feature because of the money, not the time, it saves me.
Mark Hachman/ IDG
Steam will copy the game files, but it won’t copy games that have been previously saved. In addition to downloading properties and props from the Steam Workshop, you will also need to download those from the Steam Cloud. Video games may be transferred freely between computers, but only in one direction: to a Steam Deck.
Why can’t Windows do this?!
I’ve wished for years that Microsoft would do this. However, despite Windows’ repeated assurances that this is the case, it has never happened. Delivery Optimisation is a setting in Windows 10 and 11’s Settings menu (Windows Update > > Advanced options > > Delivery optimisation) that purportedly does the same function. whether you have more than one Windows computer, Delivery Optimisation will first check the others to see whether they need the update. After it has been retrieved from those computers, it will be uploaded to Microsoft’s servers.
I cannot recall ever seeing this happen in all the years I’ve been working with computers. Never have we ever done it.
It’s conceivable I have disabled a crucial element of surprise control. Perhaps Microsoft’s code on each given PC is somewhat different from that used on any other PC, making Delivery Optimisation obsolete. I can’t say for sure. According to Occam’s Razor, the people who made it got distracted and assumed we’d forget about it.
I have no interest in putting that out of my mind. I think it would be great if Shipment Optimisation was compatible with Windows. Steam merely arrived first.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor
Mark is the senior editor at PCWorld, where he covers topics such as Microsoft developments and chip advancements. He has written for publications such as PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite in the past.