How to Move a Steam Game to Another Location

JJ — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 15:58:19 +0000

If you’ve just bought a fancy new solid state drive, you might want to move a select few games across for improved performance and loading times. You may also just be running out of space on your main drive and feel like relocating a game to a secondary hard drive. Unfortunately the guys at Valve Software have not been kind enough to let you move or install your games in different locations. Thankfully, there is a workaround for this dilemma. Basically we can move a game folder and then create a virtual link to it from its original location. That way we essentially “fool” Steam into thinking it hasn’t moved. Clever eh?

The first thing we need to do is find out the current location of your Steam games. By default, Steam keeps all game files in its initial installation folder. If you’re running a 64-bit version of Windows like myself, that would most likely be “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common“. If you’re running a 32-bit version of Windows, it would likely be found in “C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common“.

If you chose to install to a different folder, you’ll need to locate it. Right-click on your Steam icon and click properties, take note of the Target location. If you’re in Windows 7 and Steam is running, you might need to right click the icon in the task-bar, then right-click the small steam icon as per the image below.

In my case, I want to make some room for Skyrim (!!!) on my SSD. So I’m moving Supreme Commander 2 to my RAID array. Please follow the steps below, substituting where appropriate:

1. Browse to the appropriate folder – in my case that’s “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common”.

2. Right click on the game folder and click Cut as per the image below (yes it’s basic stuff, but many people nowadays don’t have a clue about file management).

3. Browse to the hard drive and location that you wish to relocate the folder to. In my case that’s D:\Games. Right click the white space and click Paste. Be patient while the folder moves.

4. Once that’s complete, we need to run a command prompt. Click the Windows button and type in cmd and hit Enter.

5. We need to browse to the original Steam installation folder. So in my case I would type:

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common

6. We then need to create a virtual link to the new location. Very easy to do. Remember that this needs to have exactly the same name as the folder we just moved. In my case, the name of the folder was “supreme commander 2″, so the command is:

mklink /j "supreme commander 2" "d:\games\supreme commander 2"

Hit Enter. If this worked correctly you should see a message that says something like:

"Junction created for supreme commander 2 <<===>> d:\games\supreme commander 2"

Just to recap – the mklink command is used in the following format:

mklink /j "the location where the game used to be" "the location where the game is now"

If you have any trouble, please post below and I will gladly help.

How to Move a Steam Game to Another Location originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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4 Ways To Play Windows Game On Linux

Damien Oh — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:34:26 +0000

Playing Windows games on Linux is not really a difficult task. Most gamers are reluctant to migrate to Linux because they have this misconception that Windows games cannot be played on Linux. How wrong they are. If you are one of those avid gamers that I mentioned above, here are 4 ways that you can play Windows games on Linux.

1) Wine

The obvious way to install any Windows applications on Linux is via Wine. At the time when WineHQ released the stable 1.0 version, it has already supported more than 200 Windows games. Before you install any games on Linux, you can first check out Wine AppDB whether your game is already supported in Wine.

2) PlayOnLinux

PlayOnLinux (POL) is a python based script based on Wine code. It is a useful tool that aim to help Linux users run Windows games on Linux without having to go through the scary command line interface. The main features of POL lies in its ability to allow each application to be installed within its own wineprefix. What this means is that one can easily install/modify/remove Windows games without affecting the systems or other applications. POL is open source and has a strong community support on their POL forum. Being a python script, it is not limited to any Linux distribution. Whether you are using Ubuntu, Fedora or Gentoo, you can find installation and usage instructions on the POL site.

3) CrossOver Games

CrossOver Games is an addition to the popular CrossOver series. Unlike other CrossOver products, which are aimed primarily at office productivity applications, CrossOver Games focuses on the stability of installing Windows games on Linux (and Mac OSX). As the same as PlayOnLinux, CrossOver Games provides a click and install method that makes it simple for anyone to use. The latest version of CrossOver Games has already tested to work with more than a hundred Windows games, including the popular World of Warcraft, Half-Life2 and Counterstrike.

CrossOver Games costs $39.95

4) Cedega

Formerly known as WineX, Cedega is a proprietary software from Transgaming Technologies specifically designed for running game written for Windows under Linux. Being a proprietary product, users must subscribe to Transgaming membership to enjoy the full functionality of Cedega.

As a fork of Wine, Cedega strength lies in implement the Mircosoft DirectX API on Linux. Installation of games using Cedega is make to mimics the experience that Windows users have. You insert the disc, run setup.exe, wait for the game to finish installing and finally enjoy your game.

4 Ways To Play Windows Game On Linux originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)
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