Making steam games portable

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CarterM

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Aug 26, 2014
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Hello everyone!

I am currently a student and as you can assume, school computers do not allow steam and I am far too poor to buy a laptop that could run games.

So what I want to do is somehow get a game to run from a USB flash drive. I know when you launch a game through steam, a client comes up saying "connecting to steam". I'm not sure if that will lead to problems with launching the game if I was just to copy the game's folders onto a flash drive and just run it that way.

Thank you for all the help!
 
Solution
manofchalk
Some games can be run independent of steam (indie games typically), and others are more tightly integrated and wont. Its kind of just luck of the draw.
My best guess on how to get it to work beyond hoping that the game will run without the client, install Steam to the USB stick and see if it can still run on a school machine. It could be a problem where you cant install anything on the machine, but it wont stop a program from running.
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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May 11, 2012
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Some games can be run independent of steam (indie games typically), and others are more tightly integrated and wont. Its kind of just luck of the draw.
My best guess on how to get it to work beyond hoping that the game will run without the client, install Steam to the USB stick and see if it can still run on a school machine. It could be a problem where you cant install anything on the machine, but it wont stop a program from running.
 
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Vynavill

Honorable
Nov 30, 2013
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Shouldn't people study there, rather than be playing games? :D
And also, they usually have weak and cheap computers, what makes you think you can play games there?

Humor aside, I'm afraid you can't, and if you can, it's literally on the barely legal side and requires a lot more hoops to go through...

First and foremost, games on Steam require it to be running in online mode at least once on that machine and require it to be used to download and install the game. You can copy all the files, but it'll simply ask you to install Steam and to connect to your profile before running if you do it.

However, very theoretically, if and only if the game is a physical retail copy and if you can prove you bought the game legally, AFAIK some countries' copyright laws allow you to create an illegal copy of the game, as long as it's only used for personal backup purposes. You can probably see where this is going, and you could do that, but I doubt your school would be happy to have illegal content on their computers, even temporarily...
Before I go on, a little note: Should someone else read this paragraph, I kindly ask to be corrected if I'm wrong. I'd rather not give out false information on this subject...

Back on topic, even if it was possible to do so, the computer at your school would need to have installed all the possible pre-requisites (DirectX, .Net frameworks, c++ redistributables, physx, updated video drivers), and it still wouldn't be sure it'll work.

In the end, the short answer to this is no, you can't and it's best for you you didn't try it.

Edit: just read manofchalk's answer. That may very well do the trick, although you'd still need required frameworks and drivers to run. That, and the hope that your school's network admins aren't clever as mine were... Any outbound traffic, except the one towards particular websites or originating from particular applications, was completely blocked.
 
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