The reason

After very “successful” launch of the new DLC (Seekers of the Storm) for one of my favorite games – Risk of Rain 2 (thank you, Gearbox), I wanted to revert to the previous version of the game.

Although Gearbox hasn’t provided an option to downgrade the game in the Steam client, it’s still possible to do it using Steam’s Depot system.

There are external tools like DepotDownloader, which can automate the process of downloading the game from the depot, but it requires Steam credentials, which some people might not want to share with third-party tools. So I decided to go the way of using Steam’s built-in console.

The solution

Here is my solution on how to downgrade any game (in this case, specifically, Risk of Rain 2).

  • Make sure that ROR2 is already installed on your PC
  • Backup your save file to the Steam cloud
  • Copy ROR2 SteamID (632360) from the main ROR2 steamDB page: https://steamdb.info/app/632360/subs/
  • Go to the depots ( https://steamdb.info/app/632360/depots ) and copy “RiskofRain2 Windows” DepotID (632361)
  • Find previous Manifest ID of the ROR on steamDB: https://steamdb.info/depot/632361/manifests . For my example I’ll use last version before SOTS update (9058106608706845920)
  • Launch Steam’s built-in console, it could be done using two methods:
    1. Type steam://open/console in browser and it will redirect you to your Steam app
    2. Launch Steam with -console flag
  • Steam console should appear as a separate tab in the Steam’s top-bar. Execute command in the Steam console:
    • download_depot 632360 632361 9058106608706845920
    • Command breakdown:
      • download_depot – Steam API command for downloading games from depots
      • 632360 - ID of the game to be downloaded (in our case, ROR2)
      • 632361 - Depot ID (in our case “RiskofRain2 Windows” depot of ROR2)
      • 9058106608706845920 - specific manifest (version) ID of the game
  • Command will tell you that download had began, but Steam will not show the download progress in the Downloads tab. Just wait for console to print out that game is finished downloading successfully.
  • Go to the path, that console will print out (by default it will be C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\content\app_632360\depot_632361).
  • Replace all the files in your ROR2 game directory (be default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Risk of Rain 2 with files from the depot download.
  • (Advised) Relaunch Steam to ensure that Steam will try to re-sync the save file from cloud
  • (Optional) Disable automatic updates in Steam for ROR2
  • ???
  • Profit, you are playing previous version of ROR2.

References