Can I do this easily? (Game moves to new system)

[SurfD]

Ok, here's the deal:

I already owned a copy of both Half-life 2, and Episode 1.
I later purchased the Orange box (for Ep 2, Portal and TF2).
I now have a Gift available of HL2 and Ep1.

I want to Give said Gifts to my brother, who, inconveniently enough, is on a dialup connection out in the boonies.

So i backed up my info for HL2, EP1 (and i threw in Lost Coast also) using the In-steam Backup Tool, figuring that he could take the backup dvd home, install Steam normally, setup an account, and use the backup disk to unpack all the game data off the backup, and then register them as his own with the Gift codes.

Problem is, when he tries to activate the gift code, it asks him to download a fresh copy of the games (3+gigs over dialup? i dont think so), and when he tries to unpack them off the backup disks, it asks him for what appears to be my HL2 cd key.

Is there something i am missing here?

- Please note, i have never used the backup feature through steam, so i dont know what to expect when trying to recover from your backup disk.

[Samwise]

I suspect that the backups are encrypted with your SteamID as a key to prevent them from being transferred to another account.

I bet if you logged in as your brother at your place and made the backup that way (you might have to redownload, I'm not sure if Steam is clever about sharing caches among multiple users on one machine), he'd be able to use that at his place (with his account) without any problems.

[Prospero]

I was able to use a TF 2 backup to bootstrap a bunch of computers at my school that have the internet cafe license. I haven't tried with a normal account.

[KallDrexx]

I have no idea how the backup feature works, but you can always just take the .gcf files in your steamapps directory, put them on a dvd and copy them into his steamapps directory.  Steam should recognize it then unpack them correctly without having to download anything.  We did this all the time at my last job to pass around tf2, portal, and hl2 ep 2 so we only had to use the bandwidth once.

[schild]

Backups aren't encrypted. Works fine.

Go to do it.

Do the gift code. Cancel the install. Uninstall steam. Reinstall. Copy over the backups.

[NiX]

I'm not sure if Steam is clever about sharing caches among multiple users on one machine

It figures it out. Whenever I play on my brothers computer it says CS:S is pre-loaded because he has it and I don't.

[SurfD]

Backups aren't encrypted. Works fine.

Go to do it.

Do the gift code. Cancel the install. Uninstall steam. Reinstall. Copy over the backups.

So what is the code key it was asking him for when trying to recover off the backup disk i made for him?

[schild]

I have no clue. I did this 2 days ago and it didn't ask that.