Are previously downloaded Steam games transferable from Windows to Linux?
I've backed up many of the Steam games I had installed in Windows. Am I able to use these on Linux or do I need to re-download them?
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I've backed up many of the Steam games I had installed in Windows. Am I able to use these on Linux or do I need to re-download them?
Yup, you'll be fine. If a game has a Linux version though, you'll still need to download some portion of it. By the way, just don't use NTFS to play on Linux.
In my experience it works perfectly fine as long as you perform the steps outlined here, as per Valve's official recommendation. The section about preventing read errors is particularly important, but the whole thing is worth a read.
THANK YOU for this!! I fought with ntfs in a new manjaro install last weekend and just could not friggin figure it out! So excited to see a valve better fix!
No worries, glad it helped!
Might be useful for dual-boot users or the people in transition, but doesn't worth the hassle for exclusive users. However it will still cause some problems one way or another because it's just a workaround.
Why not NTFS? Back when I used to dual-boot, I always used the NTFS on my shared games drive. Never had any problems, especially with ntfs-3g on Linux
It is possible that you didn't have problems but it has a huge potential for that. WINE uses Linux symlinks and that's the main reason why it's not a good idea using NTFS for that, since when you boot Windows it'll correct those files because Windows and Linux have different case-sensitivity. Basically Windows will corrupt those files and you will have problems regarding that. If you don't boot into Windows you probably won't have problems though. On the other hand if you don't boot into Windows, why use NTFS. :)
Yep, I imaged my friend's game drive to test this out (they have many games) and sure enough, some didn't work after booting into Windows and later launching them with WINE. Thanks for the clarification :)
No problem! I experienced the very same thing when I was still dual-booting so I know it well. :) Other than media disk, it doesn't worth sharing disks between Linux and Windows. And Windows still can cause problems there.
Most games were fine but some wouldn't even launch off of ntfs
Thanks. I don't mind dling some additional stuff I just would prefer to avoid the bulk of it.
No problem! By the way, if Linux version of a game is broken (you'll encounter those), or if you want to use Proton regardless, set a Proton version for that game before installing and you can restore your backup without downloading anything.