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How to Download Older Versions of a Steam Game
By Aevoa and 1 collaborators
This guide allows you to access and download older versions of a Steam game. This guide is also in russian.

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Aevoa
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Posted
Updated
25 Mar, 2017 @ 12:04am
14 Aug, 2022 @ 10:13am
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Guide Index
Overview
ORDER BEST STEAM DESIGN  
Introduction 
 
Step 1 
Step 2 
Step 3 
Step 4 
Step 5 
Step 6 
Step 7 
Step 8 
Step 9 
Step 10 
Finished! 
Russian Translation 
 
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Comments
ORDER BEST STEAM DESIGN
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Feel free to check his Website![www.snaws.design]
Introduction
This guide allows you to access and download older versions of a Steam game. This is made possible because SteamDB keeps track of updates to all games, so as long as the version you want was available after the game has been publicly released, this should work.

Credit for this guide goes to Reddit user /u/GMMan_BZFlag
Step 1
Go to SteamDB[steamdb.info] and search for the game you want.

Step 2
Click on the app ID of the game you're looking for. This will take you to it's details page.

Step 3
On the left of the screen you'll see a menu. Navigate to "Depots", and then click on the depot ID of the one you'd like to download.



Clicking your chosen depot ID will take you to a new page.
Step 4
Now click on the "Manifests" tab.



Look at the list and find the version that you want to download. Record it's manifest ID.

Step 5
Open the Steam console by copy pasting this code into your browser's URL:
steam://nav/console



Press enter. A launch application should pop up. Select the Steam client and open the link.



This will open the Steam console in your Steam client.
Step 6
The syntax to the "download_depot" command is as follows:
download_depot <appid> <depotid> [<target manifestid>] [<delta manifestid>] [<depot flags filter>] : download a single depot

You only need to worry about the first three arguments to it. Type the command, then the app ID, depot ID, and the manifest ID of the depot version you want.

Step 7
Wait for Steam to download the depot. You won't see any indication of progress, but you can tell it's downloading by looking at the network usage on your downloads page. The download can pause/resume if your connection goes out, but won't if you restart the client.

Step 8
After the download is done, Steam will show you where the files were downloaded to.

Step 9
Go to the original game's installation directory, and move the files somewhere else. Then go to where the depot files were downloaded to, and move everything over to the game folder.
Step 10
You may have to rename the game's EXE file if the dev changed the launch options recently. You can find the current EXE name by going to the game's SteamDB page and clicking on the Configuration tab.
Finished!
You should now be able to launch the old version through Steam!
Note: Game updates will make a mess of things, so if you want to stay on the same version, you should make a copy of the files so you don't have to download them again after Steam's done trying to update.
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186 Comments
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giovilella 8 Aug @ 1:57pm 
Invalid parameters
Fox 29 Jul @ 8:50am 
No, these old versions download to a folder outside of your regular steamapps folder so they won't be auto updated. You can direct play games from another folder if you create steam_appid.txt next to the games exe file and inside this txt just write the steam appid for the game.
KiloFeenix 26 Jul @ 10:36am 
Doesn't steam force you to update before you can play a game?
TheLegendaryGarbageMan 4 Jul @ 12:58am 
Is it possible to specify a location to download to? I want to download an old version of a game on my Steam Deck, but it downloads to my internal storage and I don't have enough space for it. Is there any way to make it download to my SD card instead?
Fox 26 Jun @ 1:10am 
Rimru you can use the third party SteamRE/DepotDownloader and this will show download progress as well as supporting some manifests that Steam no longer supports downloading through the console. Up to you if you use it or not though.
tyl0413 25 Jun @ 11:26am 
No there is not other than monitoring network and storage activity
Rimuru Tempest 25 Jun @ 11:24am 
is there a way to check the progress of a depot download
Aleks_TearX 11 Jun @ 3:44pm 
its confirmed it works with people playground
ffets 10 Jun @ 11:27am 
Thanks a lot, this was really helpful and worked perfectly well.
Sinister Salad Eater 7 Jun @ 8:44pm 
I'm going to tear my eyes out after seeing that banner. Thanks, you've ruined my life :(