Bethesda / Valve / Sam Machkovech
If you’ve been waiting to open a bottle of Balmora Blue Wine and pour one out for the soon-to-be-closed Bethesda Launcher, today might be the day.
Bethesda has now formally rolled out a method to seamlessly transfer most PC games and virtual currencies purchased or acquired on the 6-year-old Bethesda Launcher storefront. On May 11, the launcher will no longer work and you will need Steam to access any game you acquired through Bethesda Launcher from that time on.
From Wednesday, you can officially transfer all compatible content to Steam and safely uninstall Bethesda Launcher. As Ars Technica has confirmed, the process can be painless for you.
Useful links, simple account transfer process
If you have previously used Bethesda Launcher, log in to Bethesda.net to see what content is associated with your account. Everything labeled “game”, “expansion”, “DLC” or “currency”, with the exception of content related to The Elder Scrolls Onlineshould be compatible with Bethesda’s Steam transfer process.
This account page has a sidebar on the right with two additional useful tabs. Start with “linked accounts.” If you do not already have a Steam account linked here, use the plus sign on this page to enter your Steam username and password. Once done, click the “Upload Library” tab and this will allow you to transfer the entire Steam-compatible content of your account to a single Steam account. Instead of handing out Steam redemption codes for each game, Bethesda coordinates the entire transfer of the game’s credentials in the background, which took about 10 minutes for my personal account.
If your Bethesda.net account is full of games that you already own on Steam, this might be a good time to contact a friend who needs free games and make an appointment. Just keep in mind that you will not receive “duplicate” copies or Steam gift options for games you own on both Bethesda Launcher and Steam, and you may not break your extra games out here until you move them to Steam; duper goes into dissolution in the process.
Some of this process may seem familiar as Bethesda already rolled out a milder version of the transfer process in early 2020. Fallout 76 s earliest owners were able to claim a free copy of the game on Steam as part of its delayed launch on that platform as long as they had linked a Steam account in April 2020. This free offer came in part due to. Fallout 76 does not support cross-player games on Bethesda.net and Steam.
Did you catch this news too late? Do not worry
Good news for anyone who sees this article well after May 11 and freaks out: calm down. It is okay. The official Bethesda.net website will remain online for the foreseeable future for a couple of reasons, the biggest of which is that any expired Bethesda Launcher accounts will hang out in a hermetically sealed state and wait for affected users to log in to a at any time and initiates a transfer of games and currencies to Steam. Bethesda.net will also continue to operate for games that support its logins, whether it is to provide game-specific perks or keep track of saved files.
The biggest non-Steam exception from today’s transfer process is The Elder Scrolls Online, which has always required its own PC launcher (much like other popular MMOs sold on Steam). If your Bethesda Launcher library has any offline save and configuration files, you will need to manually move them to your newly installed versions of Steam. For virtually all affected games, the process is as simple as moving files from an old installation folder to a new one, and Bethesda describes exact file locations on a useful support page. That process is different too Eternal doombut since its saved files need to be moved with a custom storage conversion tool that is available from today as a free download.