Can my friend use my game files that i download from steam/origin to play online?

[Shammikit]

me and a friend of mine are planning to collect money and buy some games from origin and steam and i will be the one who is downloading.i want to know after downloading these games can i give the files to my friend and will he be able to play online?

the games we planned to download are the crew,need for speed and battlefield 1.

 

[Praesi]

No. Use Family Share.

[BarnacleStinson]

Can you and have him install the game and have it work? Yeah. Is it legal to do so? Ehhhh....I'd say probably not. Being that this is a place that can get shut down for piracy promotion, we cannot condone illegal distribution of software in any way, shape or form. It's illegal. And he also HAS to have an account on Steam that has a record of purchasing the game for online functionality to work.

[CookieMaster]

family share, but giving files wont work becuase it needs to vertifiy a account that has the game.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Praesi said:

No. Use Family Share.

 

35 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

You can let him use your Origin account and family share your Steam library, but then only one person may play online with the game at any given time.

If you want to play WITH him online on the same game, he will have to buy a copy as well. But yes you can still give him the game files so he doesn't have to download it all over again.

 

20 minutes ago, BarnacleStinson said:

Can you and have him install the game and have it work? Yeah. Is it legal to do so? Ehhhh....I'd say probably not. Being that this is a place that can get shut down for piracy promotion, we cannot condone illegal distribution of software in any way, shape or form. It's illegal. And he also HAS to have an account on Steam that has a record of purchasing the game for online functionality to work.

He said they'll be buying them. 

 

OP, if your both buying the games then sure you can download them and take them to your friend. Steam doesn't care where the files come from, as long as you have the game in your account it will run perfectly. Just remember each game has a vdf file accompanying it, make sure to take that too otherwise Steam won't recognise the files. 

 

If however your planning to buy one copy and share then the above posters are correct, it won't work. 

[Ryoku]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

 

 

He said they'll be buying them. 

 

OP, if your both buying the games then sure you can download them and take them to your friend. Steam doesn't care where the files come from, as long as you have the game in your account it will run perfectly. Just remember each game has a vdf file accompanying it, make sure to take that too otherwise Steam won't recognise the files. 

 

If however your planning to buy one copy and share then the above posters are correct, it won't work. 

This is game dependent though, some mmo's or games with launchers that download and update the game through the launcher will not work like that, It will download the entire game regardless if the files are in the game folder or not.  A few game that have done this to me with are Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, and Star Trek online, Transferred the files to my laptop and it just downloaded the whole game again.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Ryoku said:

This is game dependent though, some mmo's or games with launchers that download and update the game through the launcher will not work like that, It will download the entire game regardless if the files are in the game folder or not.  A few game that have done this to me with are Final Fantasy XIV, Warframe, and Star Trek online, Transferred the files to my laptop and it just downloaded the whole game again.

Yep, totally true.

 

Also OP, worth noting that BF1 is Origin and that can be trickier to get working though it can be done. What you must do is open origin on your friends PC before you copy the files and start BF1 downloading then quit origin while its downloading. Next open up the origin downloads folder and replace the download cache with your backup files then finally open Origin and when it launches it SHOULD* do a file integrity check and recognise the game files are already there and run the installer.

 

*I said should because this is very hit and miss, it works 90% of the time for me and most of my friends but I have one friend where it never works on his PC and I've never been able to discover why.