Top feature on Steam can save you hours gameandnews

Valve has added a new feature to Steam. The beta feature will make Steam deck owners in particular happy – because it also potentially saves several download hours.

Steam offers game transfers over the local network

If you have more than one gaming PC in the house or if you bought the Steam Deck not too long ago, you may know the problem: In order for the same game to run on both systems, it has to be downloaded on both systems. Depending on your internet connection, this can take quite a while. Loud current Statista statistics lies the average download speed in Germany is just over 80 Mbit/s. Downloading a major AAA game can feel like an eternity.

Admittedly, if you don’t want to wait that long, you can also share the installation folder of a system over the network, copy the data over it and then click on Steam during the installation on the new system that you already have the corresponding game files on the disk – But this procedure was not really comfortable.

Looking for a new gaming PC that won’t make you poor? Colleague Daniel has put together a suitable system for you:

Valve seems to think so too and has now rolled out a new function for the beta version of Steam that automates exactly this process and can potentially save you several hours: the Game transfer via local network. But how exactly does the new feature work? Very simple: If there are two PCs with Steam in the same network and you already have a game installed on one system that you now want to install on the other, the data will not be loaded from the Internet, but instead directly from yours transfer local network from one system to another (source: Steam).

The advantage: the transmission speed is usually significantly higher. Brief example: I am currently using a 100 Mbit/s DSL line from Vodafone. With the new Steam function, on the other hand, I can achieve transmission speeds of almost 300 Mbit/s from my computer to the Steam Deck – and that via WLAN. So if I already have the game I want to play on the Steam Deck installed on my gaming PC, it is installed three times faster thanks to this feature – provided my gaming PC is also switched on at the time of installation on the Steam Deck. And if I had connected the Steam Deck via a dock via LAN, the result would probably be even more impressive.

Since I use my Steam Deck, among other things, to play games that I normally play on the PC in bed, I often find myself in the embarrassment of having to download a game twice, which makes me must have taken dozens of hours. Thanks to the new Steam feature, this problem is finally history. So a big thank you to the developers at Valve. This little feature is a real highlight for me – and probably for many other Steam Deck owners as well.

Speaking of the Steam Deck: is it actually worth buying the Valve handheld? Our colleague Severin explains to you in the video what he thinks of the device:

These conditions must be met in order to use the Steam Feature

Currently there is the new feature only in the beta client of Steam. So if you want to try the feature yourself, you have to activate beta participation in the Steam settings – also on the Steam Deck.

In addition, there are the following requirements for using game transfer over the local network:

Both Steam clients must be online and able to find each other on the same local network (Transfers are not possible when a Steam client is offline). Game transfer settings must allow transfer on both devices (e.g. both logged-in users must be Steam Friends if they have the “Friends Only” setting selected).

Game files can only be transferred when the Steam client broadcasting from is idle. No downloads or games may run on this, for example. The game must be officially released and playable by both Steam users (no preload).

The game files must be on the sending PC current be.

PC must be running in Steam desktop mode to transfer game files. Steam decks, PCs in Big Picture mode, and custom launchers are currently unable to transfer files over the local network.

(Source: Steam)