The Steam Deck now helps sport transfers in your native community, permitting you to repeat put in video games out of your PC to the Steam Deck with out having to re-download them over the web. This characteristic, which comes bundled with the Steam Deck beta replace launched final week, ought to assist cut back the quantity of web information you employ, particularly if you end up steadily redownloading hefty video games to your handheld.

To achieve entry to the characteristic, you first should allow Steam’s beta on each the Steam Deck and the Steam shopper in your PC. From there, choose the sport you wish to set up in your Steam Deck, and Steam will routinely verify to see if any PC in your community already has the sport. If it finds one, Steam will start the sport switch course of.

It’s price noting that this characteristic applies to PCs on the identical community as nicely, so that you’re free to switch already-installed Steam video games to your PC from some other PCs in your family. Steam goes into extra element about the way it all works on its help web page, and notes if the gadgets lose connection in the course of the switch course of “or no extra content material is offered,” Steam will obtain the remainder of the sport from its servers as an alternative.

You can even modify settings that dictate which PCs your Steam Deck (or PC) can obtain from. Whereas Steam units it to “Solely my very own gadgets by default,” which implies you’ll be able to solely switch video games from the gadgets you’re logged into Steam with, you may also set it to “Solely my mates” and “Any person” if you wish to get video games from a buddy or member of the family’s PC. Sadly, Steam doesn’t help sport transfers originating from the Steam Deck or PCs in Large Image mode simply but.

I don’t have a Steam Deck (but), however I actually want I had this characteristic once I downloaded Elden Ring from my companion’s shared Steam library. Both method, I’m completely happy it’s right here now, because it’s good to have one thing that helps me keep beneath my web information cap for the month, even when it does make only a slight impression.