The Steam Deck now supports game transfers from PCs

The Steam Deck now supports game transfers over your local network, allowing you to copy installed games from your PC to the Steam Deck without having to re-download them from the Internet. This feature, which comes with the Steam Deck beta update released last week, should help reduce the amount of internet data you use, especially if you frequently download large games to your handheld.

To access the feature, you must first activate the Steam beta on the Steam Deck and on your PC’s Steam client. From there, select the game you want to install on your Steam Deck, and Steam will automatically check to see if a PC on your network already has the game. If it finds one, Steam will begin the process of transferring the game.

It should be noted that this feature also applies to PCs on the same network, so you are free to transfer Steam games already installed on your PC from any other PC in your household. Steam explains more about how it all works on its support page and notes if devices lose connection during the transfer process “or if no more content is available” Steam will download the rest of the game from its servers instead.

You can also adjust the settings that dictate which PCs your Steam Deck (or PC) can download from. Although Steam sets it to “Only my own devices by default”, meaning you can only transfer games from devices you’re signed into Steam with, you can also set it to “Only my friends” and “Any User” if you want to get games from a friend or family member’s PC. Unfortunately, Steam does not yet support game transfers from the Steam Deck or Big Picture Mode PCs.

I don’t have a Steam Deck (Again), but I sure wish I had that feature when I downloaded Ring of Elden from my partner’s shared Steam library. Anyway, I’m glad it’s here now, because it’s nice to have something that helps me stay below my internet data cap for the month, even if it doesn’t. has only a slight impact.