Steam now lets you copy video games to Steam Deck and different PCs over a neighborhood community

Valve is giving customers with gradual web connections or bandwidth caps a brand new approach to set up video games on their gadgets. The newest add , a characteristic that lets you copy present recordsdata from one PC to a different over a neighborhood space community. Valve says the instrument can scale back web visitors and reduce the time it takes to put in video games and updates since you should use it to bypass the necessity to connect with a Steam content material server over the web.

“Native Community Sport Transfers are nice for Steam Deck homeowners, multi-user Steam households, dorms, LAN events, and so on,” the corporate . “No extra worries about bandwidth or information caps when all of the recordsdata you want are already close by.” When you’ve put in the brand new software program in your gadgets, Steam will first verify if it could switch a sport set up or set of replace recordsdata over your native community earlier than contacting a public Steam content material server. If at any level one of many gadgets concerned within the switch is disconnected out of your native community, Steam will fall again to downloading any needed recordsdata from the web.

By default, the characteristic is ready to solely work between gadgets logged into the identical Steam account, however you can even switch recordsdata between buddies on the identical native space community. It’s additionally potential to switch to any person on the identical community, which is one thing you’ll do throughout a LAN event. Valve has printed a FAQ with extra details about native community sport transfers, together with particulars on among the limitations of the characteristic, over on the .