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Gamers with slow internet connections or bandwidth limitations may be happy: Valve has launched a feature in the latest Steam beta that allows users to transfer game installations from a PC to another PC or Steam Deck on the same local network. For example, instead of downloading the entire 50GB of Elden Ring on your desktop and laptop, you can now download the game once and copy it to a second device.
This feature is already available in the latest Steam Deck Beta and the latest PC Client Beta. This feature was first spotted in the Steam OS code back in October, so it’s great to see it implemented.
“A typical use case would be a home setup with multiple PCs or a Steam Deck on the same LAN,” Valve writes in a new FAQ. Once a game is installed on one PC, all other PCs or Steam Deck can install or update that game by transferring files directly from that PC. A modern PC can easily transfer game content at 100MB/s, and while transferring, the Steam client sending the content puts disk and CPU stress (i.e. you probably won’t want to do any intensive tasks on this PC during transmission).
By default, this feature will only allow transfers between systems that are signed in to the same Steam account. However, you can set it up to also support people on your Steam friends list or any users.
