Problems playing steam from a mapped network folder

[Nvidiaguy07]

A few months back, someone recommended that the best way for me to play games on both my computers in my house was to just map a network drive and use it like that.

For the most part it works great. Had some small problems at first because the cable i was using was limiting my speed to 10mb/s, but besides that and having to enter the steam guard code every time i switch its ok.

My only real problem is some games just will not work at all. I havent tried all my games, but just to give some examples:

ones that work:
borderlands
dirt3
trine
blur
orcs must die
mlb 2k12
team fortress 2
some others

ones that dont:
call of duty black ops
modern warfare 2
portal 2 (weird because it says the (source?) engine wont work)
serious sam 3
warhammer 40k

For all these games (the ones that work and the ones that dont), steam still goes through the install process the first time you try to play it. (.net, directx, all that crap).

Is there something that sticks out about those 5 games that run something that the other ones dont that makes it not work?

Any help is appreciated. also if you have any ideas of how to get around the steam guard crap every time i change computers.

 

[_Rick_]

I used to have some problems (not sure if they're still pertinent, but it is a possibility) even when steam is installed to a locally folder-mounted file system.
One of those was steam not detecting free space correctly during installation of games -- It would always only detect the free space of the partition/volume mounted on the drive letter.

You could alternatively try using an external HDD instead of the network share, and see if that works better.

I have no idea why steam guard is being an issue, never had that problem, even when playing games in foreign countries on friend's PCs.

 

[ixelion]

Just to clarify you have the games installed on your mapped drive and a copy of steam installed on each PC?

In this case games are being loaded through your network? I am surprised this works at all.

 

[Dankk]

A few months back, someone recommended that the best way for me to play games on both my computers in my house was to just map a network drive and use it like that.

You should've ignored him. That's a terrible idea.

If you want the game on multiple computers, but you don't want to download it twice, then copy the game from your steamapps folder onto a USB drive or something, and just transfer it to your second computer.

You shouldn't be running full-fledged games from a remote network drive, as they're not designed to be run that way. I'm not surprised that half of your games are broken.

 

[PowerYoga]

Just to clarify you have the games installed on your mapped drive and a copy of steam installed on each PC?

In this case games are being loaded through your network? I am surprised this works at all.

This.

Why the hell would you try to load games through a network? Whoever recommended that is a complete moron.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Wouldn't it be easier to install steam (and the games) on both machines and just place the savegames on the network folder? Or sync the savegame folder on each machine through the network..? I'm thinking rsync or something

 

[astrosfan315]

I keep my steam installs backed up to an external drive and just copy/paste then verify integrity on the other computer. Granted I don't play everything on all of my computers, but some games I play on my laptop and others on my desktop and some on both. I d/l once, then transfer a copy to the external hdd so I don't have to d/l again. I'm surprised with DRM issues and network latency issues that any of the games worked.

 

[Red Storm]

mapped network folder

There's your problem.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

This.

Why the hell would you try to load games through a network? Whoever recommended that is a complete moron.

i can see the theoretical appeal in at least 2 ways

1) multiple machines using a single copy of the game files.
2) if you have systems with small SSDs, but large shared network storage.