Can I unlink my ESO from Steam because Steam is driving me bonkers

The_Conspicuous_Moo · June 2021

Greetings fellow Tamrielans. I know the answer is likely no to this, but I wanted to be sure.

Steam has this thing where it 'forgets' almost 90GB of Elder Scrolls Online, and then 'finds' part of it, leaving me to download the rest.

Today's fresh download is 40GB.

This is annoying and happens at least twice a week.

Can I remove Steam from this game or would I have to buy ESO from scratch and start again?

phaneub17_ESO · June 2021

I think you have to buy another account and tell Steam to be linked to that new account for automatic login; it should uncouple from the existing one since you can't have more than one ESO account per Steam account. I've never tried it though.

thorwyn · June 2021

I think you have to buy another account and tell Steam to be linked to that new account for automatic login; it should uncouple from the existing one since you can't have more than one ESO account per Steam account. I've never tried it though.

Yes, that's pretty much how it works. Buy the basic version of the game when it is on sale somewhere and link your original account to it. You might want to do a google search and find an exact step by step guide though. At any rate, it does work, I have done it and I am playing ESO 100% steam-free now. Note, however, that you have to stop any active subscription on steam if you are running ESO+.

SeaGtGruff · June 2021

Never, ever shut down or force-close Steam while ESO is running, if at all possible.

oddbasket · June 2021

No linking or unlinking required. Just buy a non steam copy of the standard game and you can simply log in with your existing ESO account that's like to steam. Every additional content you own from steam will be available since its all linked to the same account.

DreamyLu · June 2021

OP, in a first step, you should maybe try to check with Steam what causes those troubles?

I'm myself on Steam and it's working perfectly well. Same for my friends who play from Steam too. So maybe better if you don't start big steps with more risk/complication/costs and first try solving current issue?

One thing at the top of my mind to take care of: if you just close Steam windows, it's a "fake" close. Steam is properly closed only via clicking "Exit" in the main menu. If you don't take care of that, you can have it opened twice simultaneously. That can cause some troubles.
A good trick to verify that is to have steam icon pinned to your taskbar. When you mouse over icon, if it appears as "Steam (2)", it means you have Steam opened double.

Good luck

Togal · June 2021

In the steam folder for eso theres a launcher that uses password and username to log into. you could do that.

deyjasagus · June 2021

Togal wrote: »

In the steam folder for eso theres a launcher that uses password and username to log into. you could do that.

If the game was purchased through Steam after November of 2016 you can't use this method without first purchasing the game again which is exactly what I did a little over three weeks ago.

All you have to do is load the launcher using Steam. Once that is up click on account and login to your account. Go to the store and purchase the base version of ESO, it should be just under $20.00 or you can wait until another free to play weekend comes out and buy it for an extreme discount then. Once you've purchased the game you'll see you have both a standard and Steam version of the game. From this point on just use the launcher in the Program Files (x86) Steam directory and then only do that for patch days. The rest of the time run the eso64.exe file found in the client sub-directory.

If you need the full path to locate both files let me know and I'll post how they appear on my system.

The_Conspicuous_Moo · June 2021

Thanks very much for all of your help folks - I'll see if I can correct this issue with Steam first, but failing that I'll try the base game approach. Going cheap right now!

Supreme_Atromancer · June 2021

I had the same trouble. Crashes, power-outages are facts of life you can't really do much about that can- and do- cause Steam to forget where the installation is, and there's no easy way to get it to "remember", so you'll be stuck downloading the entire game all over again. Reaching out to customer service or trying to self-help through it is a hair-pulling waste of time, too. If it were once or twice ever, nbd, but it happened frequently enough that it was a massive frustrating PITA that forces me to ask why I'm bothering with this faulty middleman in the first place. I got a second account as per above, stopped using steam and have not had this problem once in the year since I switched.

Danny_Fluke · June 2021

I've been using Steam to run ESO for a few years now without any issue.

One thing to remember, you do not want to use Steam's integrity verification on the files, because Steam will check that the files are different from what it thinks is the standard, so it'll clear everything and start a fresh download. Use the launcher for any repairs or verification if you need to.

Now, to what you brought up, it sounds similar to what I faced when I first started playing, but for the life of me I can't recall exactly how I got around it. I do seem to recall that there's some sort of version file or something to that extent in Steam's directory that I had to change, which worked like a charm. I don't know if this helps, and if I remember what I did I'll get back to you. Otherwise good luck with getting Steam to work.

Fennwitty · June 2021

Thank you for letting me know about this potential issue, fortunately I haven't experienced it myself.

The main problems I get with Steam is that I basically have to close it every day (including right click and exit from taskbar) and reopen in order for any Steam updates to apply -- otherwise ESO gets crash-happy.

Maybe there's something going on with your hard drive low on space? Or some disk defrag confuses it? Not sure.