How do I transfer items between two accounts on the same computer?
I have one premium steam account that I play TF2 on, and another F2P account that I idle in. I don't know how to transfer my items from my idle account to my main account on the same computer. I don't feel like installing Steam and TF2 on another computer; that will take too long.
What can I do to transfer these items?
Sandboxie provides an excellent capability to run two instances of Steam on the same computer. As long as you're only using a single account, you can use the free version of sandboxie. This Facepunch thread Explains exactly how to set up the sandbox to correctly interact with Steam. Super simple steps would be:
- Copy your entire Steam folder to another location
- Download and install Sandboxie
- Use the settings specified in the Facepunch thread
- Launch your alt account within the sandbox, and your main account unsandboxed (aka as you normally would)
- Send trade requests between the two freely
If you're not going to launch TF2 within the sandbox, you could even omit copying the steamapps folder, saving some disk space. You can also use the mklink method specified in the thread for both copies of Steam to reference the same steamapps folder.
You have to use:
- Two different computers, or
- A computer and a virtual machine therein, or
- A native Linux copy and one running under Wine (or perhaps inside a chroot?), or
- Commercial Windows software such as Sandboxie.
If you are using a mac, you can use parallels and have 2 operating systems run at the same time. Then just have steam installed on both and log onto each account and transfer.
IF you can't do that then I would suggest you do what badp stated, as it's the only other real option.
It would be much easier to use another pc, however.