This is a feature that I’m sure many have been eager to see roll out for quite some time now. While the feature is only in the Steam Client Beta at this time, if it all goes smoothly, I’m sure it’ll be in the public release very soon though. However, keep in mind, all your systems, including Steam Deck if you have one, must be the beta in order for it to work.
So what is it? Well, Local network game transfers allows you to download a game or piece of software on Steam to one computer, and then transfer the game over your local network to the other system. So technically, you’ve only downloaded the game once, saving you a lot of DATA, and hopefully a lot of time if you have pretty slow internet. The great thing is that this will also be true for updates, not just the main installer.
Active local network game transfers will be called out on the Download page:
This is how it looks from the recipient side:
Before you start to download or update a game on Steam, Steam will first check if there are other PCs running Steam on your LAN (local area network) that could transfer the needed game content to you directly.
If a potential PC is found, your client will ask the Steam backend server to contact that other PC’s Steam client and start a game file transfer if local network transfers are enabled and possible. If the game file transfer is accepted, your PC will try to download as much content as possible from the other PC. If the connection is lost or no more content is available, Steam will fall back to use public Steam content servers to download the remainder.
There are four settings to specify what other PCs + Steam clients can be used for game file transfer. These settings are bi-directional, and to allow local transfers in, local transfers out are automatically enabled. The default setting is “Only my own devices”, meaning you can only transfer in and out of PCs where your own account is logged into Steam.
Any Steam client or Steam Deck can receive game content from another client on their LAN, but there are a few conditions that have to be met before the local transfer can take place.
A few additional notes about how this feature works from a privacy and security standpoint:
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