Howdy folks, quick question about steam... My friend wishes to play Left 4 Dead with myself and other mates this evening, he has a poor internet connection, but would rather pay for the game via steam than in the store due to price. Is it possible for my friend to purchase the game via steam (on his own account of cause), but then use my retail disc to install it from, thus avoiding the ultra slow download? Has anyone else tried this before? I know that with my retail copy of Left 4 Dead, I was able to put in my CD key and then leave the game to download via steam as its just as fast from installing from DVD (get 20mbit internets here). So I know it works to buy a retail copy of the game, then install form the web, but can we purchase from the web, but then install from disc? TIA Delph
I dont know if it works, i tryed it with orange box. I bought it on steam and lent my friends retail disk. but i had no luck Something that dose work though is if you copy your left 4 dead folder from your steam folder then put it in place on there pc.
what you can try is backup the game content via steam's interface. this should burn a disc that you can use to restore purchased games without downloading them. give this disc to him, he buys the game, cancels the download, uses disc to restore game content.
I'd say copy your folder, just had to do that at a lan, connection there wasn't horrible we just didn't have the time. we had to reinstall OS on his comp before we could play. I've copied entire steam folders with out a problem. I think if your using a different OS then the other person you might have problems tho.
Ahh valid point regarding the OS, both are using vista but ones 32bit and mines 64bit... will give it a go tonight, if all else fails ill tell him to drag his laptop over and steal my interwebs for 30mins or so.
It should be fine form os to os, I moved my steam folder from a xp 32bit install to a vista x64 and everything worked.
most games even if they are 64 bit have a 32 bit location (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\Steam Apps\ etc etc) and will have both 32 and 64 bit executables within that folder, so its fine to use installs from either for either, if that makes sense. once you have copied it, do steams verify game files thing, and it should just amend anything thats different without having to download the whole shebang over again.
You can add games already installed onto your PC in Steam. Just install with yours then try adding it in that way!
Wooooo appears to have copied content ok but only after the game started installing from the net, then called it, then backup from the restore, trying to restore, before any insternet install did not work for some reason.
