9/7/2018 Steam Community :: Guide :: How to Downgrade Game Version

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How to Downgrade Game Version 198 ratings

By l a n g g i

Updates break your game? Make your saves incompatible? Make your controller unrecognized? Render external tools
like input mapper or cinematic tools unusable? This guide will show you how to roll back game updates.

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1. Enable Steam Console CREATED BY

langgi
Right click on your Steam desktop shortcut, click properties and add -console after Steam target Last Online 12 hrs, 58 mins ago

address.

Category: Modding Or Configuration

Posted Jul 23, 2017 @ 2:44am

Updated Jul 7 @ 3:25am

3,292 Unique Visitors

143 Current Favorites

GUIDE INDEX

Overview

1. Enable Steam Console

2. Go to steamdb.info and search your ga…
3. Get Game/App ID Number
4. Check game's ACF file
5. Get Depot ID number
6. Get manifest ID number
7. Download the package
8. Mischief managed :^)
9. Prevent Steam from Updating Your Ga…

Comments

If done correctly, you should see 'Console' tab after your Steam username on the client.

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Alternatively, you can also access Steam console by pressing Win + R or open web browser and then
type the command:

steam://open/console

2. Go to steamdb.info and search your game

Open your internet browser and go to https://steamdb.info then type in your game name at search bar
on top right.

3. Get Game/App ID Number

After typed in the game's title, you will see list of results. Click the one that match your game. Usually it
was categorized as 'game' not 'DLC' or 'video'. For this guide, I used HITMAN 2016 as example, AppID
236870.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO APPID NUMBER. It will be very useful on later steps. Thank you.

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4. Check game's ACF file

After finding the game's appID on Steam database, now you need to go to this location in your
computer

(Steam install path)/Steam/steamapps

or in case you install game outside Steam directory, the files will be at

(drive letter)/SteamLibrary/steamapps

In this folder you will find a bunch of appmanifest [appID number] files. Now pick the one with your
game appID, and open it with any text editor like Notepad.

Inside the files, you will see something like the image below.
The "number" inside brackets are the Depot you need to download from. While the number after
"manifest" tells you which Manifest currently installed on your hard drive.

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5. Get Depot ID number

After checking game's manifest files on Steam folder, now time to go back to SteamDB website and
find the correct Depots number.

Click on the Depot number you want to download.

Each Depots contain package of game files called 'Manifest'. Now the next thing you need to do is to
download the correct Manifest you need to downgrade or rollback the game.

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6. Get manifest ID number

Click the manifests to see all the game versions with timestamp. Pick the one you want to download.
For example, because I wanted to rollback my HITMAN back to version released in March 14, 2017, so
I look up for that. PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO MANIFESTID NUMBER ON THE RIGHT COLUMN.
Better yet, copy it to your clipboard.

7. Download the package

Now that you have AppID, DepotID and ManifestID, go back to Steam console and type down

download_depot <gameID> <depotID> <manifestID>

Example: because I wanna downgrade HITMAN to the version released in March 14, 2017. I would
type this on the console:

download_depot 236870 236871 8264336280323447139

See the numbers there 236870 is AppID, 236871 is DepotID and 8264336280323447139 is
ManifestID.

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8. Mischief managed :^)

If successful, go check your Steam download section to make sure your network is downloading the
package. The game name won't be visible, but as long as your network show any activity on the data
usage, it's working.

If you successfully downloaded the package, it will be on your [path to Steam

folder]/Steam/steamapps/content folder. All you need to do now is replacing the game files with your
downloaded package.

DONE. Congratulations, you've committed a black magic and successfully alter the existence of
time itself.

9. Prevent Steam from Updating Your Game

After successfully replaced game files with older ones, you might want to prevent Steam from auto
updating your game.

1. The 1st solution is to open the same ACF files as in step 4, then check the "State Flag" line
below the game title. Change whatever the number currently in there to "4" this means "updated
and installed".

DO NOTE: Never edit the ACF file while Steam client running. Exit Steam first, otherwise Steam will
revert your change to default.

For in-depth method about skipping updates I suggest checking THIS HELPFUL GUIDE.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2. The 2nd solution is to boot Steam straight into offline mode without going online first.

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Go to "Config" folder in your Steam folder

(Drive letter)/Steam/config

Then open "loginusers.vdf" with notepad or any text editor. Change "WantsOfflineMode" and
"SkipOfflineModeWarning" to "1". See the red circles below. You might better change
"RememberPassword" with "1" as well.

Then save the file & close text editor. Then right click the file and set it as Read-only.
You might need to restart Steam client once after that.

If you do these steps correctly, the next time you launch Steam you go straight into offline mode and
this window will pop at beginning.

Choose Start in Offline Mode, Steam should give you no further warning or asking password again.
And they will surely not update your game.

Note for offline mode: You can do this indefinitely, only exception is Denuvo games, they limit you with
2 weeks offline period (after offline for 2 weeks you can't play Denuvo games without going online
first).

66 Comments < 1234567 >

Unicarn Sep 1 @ 8:23pm

Used this to go to a previous version of Titan Quest Anniversary Edition to get rid of the useless
Ragnarok content making the game worse. Thanks!

Stormbow Aug 31 @ 2:20am

Thanks! Downgraded No Man's Sky after the August 30th, 2018 patch.

Myth[Alex] Aug 6 @ 11:16pm

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9/7/2018 Steam Community :: Guide :: How to Downgrade Game Version
If we use the solution #1 (renaming the 'State Flag line's number to '4'), does this mean a game we
downgraded will not get any updates until (and if) there's an actual newer update released for it ?

As for solution #2 (using Steam in Offline mode): Do we have to keep Steam running in offline mode
all the time? (that would suck) Or just initially (right after we downgraded a game), then we can
safely go back online? (as long as the downgraded game doesn't receive any new update)

P.S. Here's my own solution (#3): Can't we just backup the downgraded game's files (from the install
directory), then re-apply them (overwrite the newer ones) every time we notice Steam has decided to
update a specific game? and afterwards, we can resume playing it on the downgraded version? (I
don't think Steam actually checks a game's files every time we launch it. But in case I'm wrong, then
feel free to correct me.)

l a n g g i [author] Jul 28 @ 7:23pm

If u type the manifest number correctly, Steam shouldn't be able to do that. Could be just Steam
auto-update the game at some point without you noticing.

Back up the downloaded depot somewhere in case the game automatically update.

nanata1991 Jul 28 @ 7:31am

When I download the depot and manifest for Enter the Gungeon, the game downloads the most
recent manifest rather than the old manifest I hand picked. Should I uninstall and delete the game
completely and try from scratch with the old manifest? Or what do?

6SHIFTER Jul 21 @ 3:47am

Latest update for Prey made my game ctd at launch. Now I can keep playing.

Thanks bro!!

yao199 (UA) Jul 18 @ 4:29am

Is it possible to download the depot to another lcoation? The size of a depot that I want to download
exceeds the volume of my disk where Steam is installed :(

ZeUberMed (G.E.W.P) Jul 7 @ 5:10am

New Problem This time in didn't updateon it's own but then tf2 keeps crashing on startup anything to
help?

l a n g g i [author] Jul 7 @ 3:29am

Not working as in, Steam still update the game? Hmm, not sure why's that.

I add one more solution to prevent Steam from updating games which is going straight into offline
mode from the start. I hope this would be helpful, as I have no idea why Steam still updating your
game. All the methods still works beautiful for me.

ZeUberMed (G.E.W.P) Jul 7 @ 2:50am

langgi I need help in step 9 in prevent Steam from updating your game i did change the stateflags to
4 but it didn't work and then I click on THIS HELPFUL GUIDE I follow the steps it still didn't work

< 1234567 >

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