Delete Local Steam Files And Ten Download Game

I want to try and completely uninstall Epic Games Launcher, and purge all of the. I did completely uninstall every file and folder I could find associated with. Even the download of the Epic Games Launcher itself] to linger at a. It also caused some errors on my PC after deleting., 04:48 AM.

Steam examines the game folder, “discovers” the files are already there, and skips the actual download for any files it doesn’t need to retrieve from the server. Steam will restore the game in. First of all, you can backup your game files by following the instructions here. Then you can right click on Skyrim in the Steam library window, right click and there should be an option to uninstall the game, otherwise known as 'Delete Local Content'.

Modern digital game distribution makes buying and installing games easier than ever. If you play games on a PC, there is a very good chance you’re using Steam. But with many games requiring more and more storage space for all those HD textures and uncompressed audio tracks, most players don’t have space for every game on their hard drives. If you’re switching to buying games on the new Epic Games store, you might not even want your older collection of Steam games installed on your system at all, and Epic is quickly building up its own library of digital titles. Luckily, we’ll show you how to uninstall Steam games so you can clear space on your hard drive.

Steam lets you uninstall and reinstall any game you’ve paid for whenever you want. The process is almost as easy as installing them in the first place. In this guide we’ll teach you how to uninstall Steam games, taking you through the process step by step.

If you’re in running low on storage space but don’t want to delete your favorite games, consider some indie titles instead, or how about a bigger, better hard drive?

Uninstalling through Steam

The quickest and easiest method to uninstall a game is through Steam itself.

Step 1: Open the Steam client and log in, if required.

Step 2: Click the “library” tab in the top navigation menu.

Local

Step 3: Locate and right-click the game you want to uninstall in your library, which should open a drop-down menu. On that drop-down, click “uninstall.”

Step 4: Steam will confirm with you whether you want to completely delete the game. When you are ready, click the “delete” button.

The game will now be uninstalled. The game name will now appear grayed out in your Steam game list.

How To Delete A Steam Game

If you ever want to reinstall it, simply double-click the game’s name, or right-click and choose “install” from the pop-up menu. Then follow the on-screen instructions. To save space on your main drive, you could consider installing the game in a secondary location.

Uninstalling through Windows

If you would rather not uninstall your games directly through Steam, you delete the game at the system level. Much like any other Windows application, you can uninstall your Steam games through Windows’ own “Programs and Features” menu.

Although this process will still take you to the Steam interface for the final step, you might prefer this method if you’re cleaning out various parts of your system at once.

Step 1: Search for “programs and features,” or navigate to the “Control Panel” shortcut in the Start menu, and click the “uninstall a program” option under “programs.”

Step 2: Find the game you want to uninstall. Listing every program by name or install date may help you find things quickly. When you’ve found it, click “uninstall” from the menu above, or right-click the game and click “uninstall” from the resulting menu.

Step 3: You will then be taken to the Steam interface. Log in, if needed. When presented with the final confirmation box, click “Delete” to finalize the uninstall. Your game will be deleted.

There is no way to reinstall a game purchased on Steam without using the Steam interface. If you want to reinstall the game at a later date, enter Steam, select the game from your library, and either double-click the game name. You can also right-click the game name, then select “install.” From there, simply follow the on-screen instructions.

Uninstalling manually

Although the above methods are the best ways to remove a game from Steam, you can also delete the game manually. This is the best way to ensure that the game has been removed from your system entirely, though it won’t remove the game from your Steam library, which may get confusing down the line.

Step 1: Navigate to your Steam installation folder. When running Windows 10, the default installation location is C:Program Files (x86)Steam.

Step 2: Open the “Steamapps” folder, followed by the “Common” folder.

Step 3: You should now see a list of game folders. Find the game you want to remove, then either select its folder and press the delete key on your keyboard or right-click the folder and choose “delete” from the resulting menu.

Delete Local Content Steam

The game will now be removed from your computer. It may still show up as ‘white’ or installed, in your Steam library, but it won’t be playable without updating and reinstalling all of its respective files.

If you want to completely remove every mention of a game from your system, you may also need to delete its configuration and save files, which are typically located in either your “Saved Games” folder, “Documents” folder, or “AppData” folder in C:Users[YourUsername].

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Steam has a built-in system for making a backup of its game files, so you don’t have to re-download a full game every time you uninstall it and want to play again later. But like a lot of Steam’s features, it hasn’t been updated in quite a while, and frankly it often manages to break the game restoration process anyway. On top of that, it’s slow, it’s clunky, and you can do better on your own.

Manually copying the files out of Steam’s game folder, then copying them back when you’re ready to play again, is much faster and more reliable. Steam’s caching system means that doing it yourself has no disadvantage versus the program’s integrated tool. If you’d like to back up your game files separately, especially to an external drive for archiving a large, 100GB+ collection or saving space on your primary system backup, here’s how to do it the easy way.

Step One: Find the Game Files

Find your standard Steam game installation folder. By default in Windows, this is located in:

In macOS, open the Finder and choose Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar, entering this path:

And in Linux-based operating systems, it’s in the following your local user directory:

This folder is divided into sub-folders, one for each game installed under Steam’s master game list. Most of them share the same name as their respective game, but some use alternate titles or abbreviations—for example, Age of Empires II HD Edition is shortened to “Age2HD.”

Remember, if you’ve set a custom game folder in Steam, your games will be installed elsewhere.

Step Two: Back Up the Games

To back up the games in the Steam common folder, just copy and paste them into another folder.

Delete local steam files and ten download games

That’s it. Really, it’s that simple. Ideally, you want them to be on another storage drive, either internal or external, because having two copies of the same game on a single drive isn’t particularly useful. I keep a dedicated game partition on my external backup drive, just so I don’t have to re-download 30 gigabytes of data every time I want to play Team Fortress 2.

Now, right-click and uninstall the game in Steam to remove it from your primary drive. If your game sits in your backup folder for more than a few months, you’ll probably have to download an update to it…but that’s a few hundred megabytes at most, perhaps a gigabyte or two. Compared to almost 80 gigabytes for DOOM, it’s a great saving in both time and bandwidth.

Step Three: Restore the Games

Restoring the games is also easy: first, copy the game folders from your backup location back into the Steam/steamapps/common directory you found in Step One. (You might have to delete the original folder, since sometimes there are a few left over files even after a game is uninstalled.) Once that’s done, open Steam itself.

Click on the Library tab, then find one of the games you just restored to your primary Steam folder. It’s uninstalled at the moment; click “Install Game.” Make sure that it’s set to install in the same folder that you just restored your game files to.

Now here’s the magic part: before Steam begins the “download” process, it will double-check the location that it’s assigned to install the game files. Steam examines the game folder, “discovers” the files are already there, and skips the actual download for any files it doesn’t need to retrieve from the server.

Steam will restore the game in a few seconds to a few minutes. If there aren’t any major updates needed, you’re ready to play right away.

Don’t Forget Your Save Files!

Delete Local Steam Files And Ten Download Game Pc

There isn’t a standard location for games to put their save files. Depending on what you’re playing, your save file might be somewhere in the My Documents or My Games folder, or it could be in the game data folder you moved around in the steps above, or in the application data folders. It might be saved on the game developer’s cloud server or with Steam’s Cloud service, or in a dozen other places.

The point is, the game installation files you backed up might not also include the game save files that actually represent your personal playtime. If you’re backing up your games to access them later, do a quick Google search for your game save location to make sure you have those files protected as well.

Delete Local Steam Files And Ten Download Game Software

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