Can I copy Steam game files from a Mac onto a PC?

I have a very slow Internet connection at home and cannot download large files there. However, I have a Macbook and fast Internet at school. Is it possible to download a game to my Macbook, then transfer the files to my home PC? Are the files different for Macs and PCs?

I did see this post about general Steam file transfer from PC to PC, but it says nothing about Macs. I wasn't sure if the files are the same or not.

Edit: I just found this thread and it sounds like a direct download isn't possible, but maybe saving a few gigs of data by copying asset files would work.

Solution 1:

I don't think you'll be able to copy everything and have it work right away, since like others have mentioned there are probably some files that are different.

However, the bulk of what you download are things like music, textures, and models, and those will most likely be the same between platforms.

What you could try doing is downloading the game onto your macbook, copying everything onto your PC, and then telling steam on the PC to verify your game files. This runs a check over all of the files you have, and repairs anything different or missing. In theory, this will let you keep all of the big asset files, while only needing to download a few small ones to make the version correct.

Solution 2:

You can use SteamCMD, Steams command-line client, to download game files, and you can also force it to download files for a different OS. You can find the app ID by looking it up in the Steam Database. That way you'll get all the executable files as well!

Edit: To be clear, I've used this method myself to download a Windows-only game on a Linux machine, and it came with all the .exe files for Windows.

Solution 3:

Unix and Windows are different platforms so there will be different files for PC and Mac. You can attempt to download PC installation files (if Steam allows it) and then copy them over to PC. Have a look at this thread at STEAM forum.