Actually the particular problem I have does have to do with Steam although I understand what you are saying there about the lazy developers. The problem with Steam is, I do not get individual installers for my games that are self contained like I do with say, GOG. Instead, I am reliant on their client system to install the games and that system is not easy to backup compared to GOGs. That was the distinction I was trying to make.

I was just poking around in various game folders within the Steamapps folder and noticed the redistributables seem to be present with each game, various runtimes, DirectX installs, etc. So apparently on a case by case basis I could probably fiddle with each game to get it properly installed. Not exactly an elegant solution but I'll take it versus throwing out almost 300 games.

Ugh, never again. I'll take the hit if it goes down. It's why I don't care that much about No-DRM. I'm not backing crap up anymore, it's just not worth the effort xD

By the time I lose access everything will be pretty dirt cheap on a new portal no doubt, not a big loss for the convenience of digital downloads. And yes, I hope to never be without Internet :3

Well I will have Internet for browsing, emails and some downloads. I can buy GOGs here and there, etc. It's just very limited unfortunately.

I'm going to be so jealous of you guys when big games come on GOG and I can't get them too!

I'd suggest making friends with relatively local people with great internetz and a DVD burner ^^

You do realize that when you copy your entire steamapps folder, Steam is quite capable of finding out why any game stopped working and download / reinstall any missing files, right?

No, I didn't realize that. So if I just copy the entire Steam folder over and run some game that needs stuff like a VC++ runtime it is going to notice this and run the first time setup first?
That is an EXCELLENT idea! I'm glad I know smart people like you here to clue me in to such things! My brother would download and burn stuff for me, then mail it down to me. Yay! How sweet. I didn't even think of that. Now I feel kinda dumb but oh, well. It ain't the first time I've felt this way.

Every time you move to a different machine it does that. And if that doesn't help, verifying game cache always helps.

Why are you moving to such rathole?

Seriously, I wouldnt move to place with shitty internet.

Try and download all the cracks you can now.

Definitely back up your collection to portable hard drive. Prices are so cheap you should be able to archive everything for a very reasonable price. It's probably well worthwhile backing everything up even if you weren't moving to a low-bandwidth area.

This isn't a solution, but also look into technology like NetLimiter which will allow you to do updates and so forth without severely affecting your family, by limiting the speed of your downloads. You could conceivably stretch out a download over an entire month, although a gigabyte still remains a gigabyte no matter how you stretch it. Version 3 of that program also includes scheduling, so you could let your download 'ramp up' over midnight, then subside back to a more friendly level through the day.

That's great to know. Thank you. I had made a post about this on the Steam forums too and checking tonight they were telling me the same thing. I am very happy to hear this. It solves the problems I was worried about. Apparently Steam is designed better than I was giving them credit for.

I did buy a two terabyte external drive so plenty of room for my backups, all of my GOGs and the massive Steam games folder. I plan to keep copies of everything on both the iMac and the USB drive to prevent loss in the case of either hard drive dying on me.

Well since Steam directly installs the games as it downloads them, it's not as much a good design as it is necessity. It needs to be able to check everything it downloaded, and because of that direct install, that means all registry entries, folders in documents etc.

That service is connected to the DLC/connection to Bioware servers. If it isn't running, you can't get a list of the DLC available, etc.

As for your actual question...

You can edit the Steam game specific install files (whatever.vdf) to prevent it from forcing installs of direct X, etc. Editing those files may not always work, but it does for most of them.

The Steam backup tool is fine to use but only if you backup each game individually.

And if you're planning on using Offline mode, run everything at least once online before hand. Also double check that Steam actually went into Offline mode correctly. It can crash during the transition resulting in Offline mode failing.

Thanks for the info. Unless I catch Steam downloading too many Source updates I will probably stay in online mode once I've moved. I will have connectivity. I'm just limited in how much bandwidth I can use per month by a lot more than here. I have read about the procedure for switching to offline mode though and will go through the motions for that if need be.

I actually want Steam to do the installs of DirectX, etc. that each game needs but from what I understand now that shouldn't be a problem and on a new machine with a new Steam install it will do that if I just copy over the Steamapps folder with all my games into the newly installed Steam. So that is good. I was worried that it didn't work that way before.

Yes, exactly. You'll see that it hasn't downloaded anything for a moment, but the client will just verify that the files haven't been corrupted and then unlock them.

It's also an effective way of doing backups IIRC.