Numerous free games are available on Steam, but adding them to your library has always been a hassle. Up until recently, getting a free game required immediate installation; otherwise, the installation would begin, and you would have to click cancel right away. A recent upgrade, however, allows you to download any free game you choose without having to start the installation procedure. You may now download the greatest free Steam games without filling up your entire hard drive.
The functionality wasn’t widely publicized by Valve, but several users found it on Reddit and Twitter. “lashman,” also known as @RobotBrush on Twitter, was one such observer.
He wrote on social media, “FINALLY!!!,” and uploaded a Star Wars: The Old Republic has two buttons underneath it: a blue “Add to Library” button and a green “Play Game” button.
To put this into perspective, free games like The Old Republic in the past would merely feature the “Play Game” button. When you press the button, the free game is added to your library and the installation process begins. You would need to manually cancel the installation if you didn’t want to play the game straight away. Although it wasn’t a major obstacle, it added a step between you and the desired game.
For games that are perpetually free-to-play, such as The Old Republic, this change doesn’t make a huge difference. Since the game is perpetually free, there’s no particular reason to add it to your library until you want to play it. However, the new “Add to library” button could prove its worth during limited-time giveaways. Publishers will occasionally make paid games available for free on Steam. If you don’t add it to your library during the promotion, you’ll have to pay full price once the promotion ends. By adding these games to your library, you’ll be able to keep them for later without having to install them right away.
The “Add to library” button is admittedly not the biggest Steam feature that Valve has ever implemented. But at worst, it will save you a single click, and at best, it will save you hundreds of gigs of hard drive space, considering you’ll never install a free game you don’t want by accident. This could be useful for gamers who have small hard drives, or limited Internet bandwidth each month.
If you want to try the feature yourself, you don’t have to do anything special. Simply make sure Steam is updated to the latest version, look up a free game you’d like to try (we recommend Star Trek Online), and click the “Add to library” button. That’s all there is to it.