Can I download TF2 from another source and add it on steam?

Hi, I want to play Team fortress 2 but I have a slow internet connection, and TF2 from Steam is 10Gb, which would take me 4 days to download.

Is it possible to download TF2 from another website (since its free) and add it on steam to play it?

Oh and also, are TF2 servers independent of steam or do you have to have steam to play on the legit servers?

 

you can make one of your friends make a backup files for the game! or buy a solid retail copy from any store!

steam login is a must to play online!

 

...why could you get it faster from another website? You could copy the Steam install from someone else if you wanted to. But no, downloading it elsewhere is not supported. And you need Steam to use the servers, I believe. TF2 is a Valve game.

 

Yup TF2 is steamworks meaning no matter where you buy the game from, you are using Steam to download & play

 

The only way to even download legal Source engine based games is with Steam.

 

Wat.

How would it be any faster to download it from another site?

 

it wouldn't be faster, but there are compressed versions, I have a 640k connection, so i found a guy who had compressed it to 2gb instead of 10gb, and was hoping to download from there

 

that sounds very sketchy. just use steam.

 

If you mean pirated versions, those won't even work with Steam (even if they are not compressed). Also like others have stated, you NEED Steam to play online.

 

Try using different download server. Maybe it's gonna be faster.

 

If nothing else, that file compression ratio raises a red flag for me. 20% of the original size? Seems a bit implausible.

 

You can purchase TF2 retail DVDs and install (why purchase TF2 when it is free boggles the mind).

 

Even if you buy retail, your looking at a pretty big download I think, the game has changed and grown in size dramatically. (unless they've been updating the DVD release).

Just use steam and wait for the download to complete. It's a managed download- you don't have to do it all at once.

 

If you have access to a university or college then you can usually download games in a few minutes.

At my sixth form we have a 100Mb connection so I can simply hook up my laptop with an ethernet cable and download most games in 15 minutes. The speed is really mind blowing, downloading at 10MB/sec is just an awesome feeling.

 

Just set the game to download right before you go to bed and leave the computer on all night. That's what I do when I redownload all of my Steam games after formatting my computer. There's nobody using the internet at my house during that time, so all available bandwidth in my house goes to my desktop or laptop.

 

I guess you don't have friends who have pirated games. My friends lent me Left 4 Dead 2 and it was compressed to 1 Gb, and I extracted it and it worked on steam, same with Crysis, it was compressed to 2.4Gb

thats the other problem, steam freezes while downloading and it actually stops I only downloaded 300mb in 1 night because steam froze, if you go on the steam forums other people are having problems with downloading using steam, both the beta and non beta versions of steam

so downloading using steam is going to be a pain because every time i leave it unattended, it freezes and stops downloading

Is there anywhere where I can do a direct download of team fortress 2? I don't mind using torrents for free games, but rumor is that they don't work on steam... unless you know some gcf code

 

You might be able to find a game backup online somewhere. One of my friends has used some of my backups without issue when he got a new PC.

 

you could just bite the bullet and buy a disc for 10 bucks from best buy

 

If you have Half-Life 2 or any other Source engine game already installed, TF2 will not download the entire 10GB because it shares some content with other Source games.

Anyway, if you can, if you know anyone who has TF2 or the Orange Box on retail discs, you can install it that way. TF2 has been updated so heavily that the discs only have about half of the total content by now, but still, better to download a few gigabytes of patches than the entire game, I suppose.