this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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Are previously downloaded Steam games transferable from Windows to Linux? (reddthat.com)
submitted 1 year ago by lightnsfw@reddthat.com to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
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I've backed up many of the Steam games I had installed in Windows. Am I able to use these on Linux or do I need to re-download them?

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[–] beesterman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Yes they can be. However, if you want to use a compatibility layer with them like proton the game files have to be stored in exFat (Linux file system format) format. If you have them on a drive formatted for NTFS (windows file system format) the game won’t start and wont tell you why. Games with native versions will run fine from a NTFS partition.

[–] solarisfire@mast.solarisfire.com 4 points 1 year ago

@beesterman @lightnsfw What?!? I run games using proton on an NTFS partition just fine...

If you do this it's safer to use lowntfs-3g so everything is forced to lower case... And yes using a proper linux filesystem is way safer.

[–] lupec@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

I'm guessing symlinking the compatdata folder to a Linux friendly filesystem, like Valve recommends here, would probably fix issues like that. I'm sure there must be edge cases but, in my admittedly not extensive experience, I haven't encountered any myself.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So currently my backups are on my media server which is ext4. These would be moved to my gaming system when I wanted to install them. I would just need to make sure that was formatted in exfat for this to work?

[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, in that case you're fine. Exfat is really only good for shared drives. Just use the default of your distribution.

[–] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 1 points 1 year ago

That makes sense. Thanks

[–] notfromhere@lemmy.one 0 points 1 year ago

Sometimes running applications from NTFS will have issues so I recommend doing rsync to a Linux FS before running