I've searched the BFG forums for this question but I can't find an answer so I'm hoping that someone here can either answer it for me or lead me to a place where I can post it on Big Fish.

Is it possible to download a game on Big Fish to a flash drive and then install it on a different computer? My computer at home is slower than molasses when it comes to downloading. Sometimes downloads take the entire night! So, I'd like to use a different computer and download to a flash drive so that I can take it home to install the game. Is that possible?

I have never found a way to do that.
In order to get a game "activated" I have to download and install it on the computer where it's ending up.

You might try asking tech support at Big Fish if they'll ever have a way to solve the bad connection problem other than by hauling the entire computer over to work or school or to a friend's house for the download.

You cannot do it on a regular flash drive. BF used to have a special selection of games you could load on a thumb drive.

You can read about it Here.

Ana

Thanks, Jenny. That actually gives me an idea though. I wonder if I could just get a portable USB external hard drive and install the game directly to that. You can get a 1TB drive for $55 or a 2TB drive for $89. I wonder if I would need to activate the game again on my home computer. I'm thinking it might work if I keep the drive letters the same on both machines.

Just saw that we posted at the same time, Ana. I'll have a look at that.

Hi Cue,
I have all my games on an external drive called a "passport media drive" which is connected by a USB cable, with BF game manager on the C drive of my computer. Presumably, since the media drive can be connected to any computer, games would work on any other computer as long as you have the BF game manager installed on the C drive of that computer.

Try it...

Thanks, spankie. That's the type of drive I'm looking at too and I'm glad it's working for you. I'll have to give it a go. I'll setup the BFG Game Manager to look at the portable drive for installed games. Once I go through this exercise, I'll update this post with anything that I run into.

Activation information is not stored in the game folder. It's hidden in the Windows registry -- probably in more than one location. A Big Fish game that's transferred from one computer to another will function as a demo on the computer you transfer to, if it works at all.

Thanks, Jenny.

So far, it looks like this is going to work. I'm not using the portable hard drive yet. I'm just testing the process with a flash drive. Using the following steps I was able to download and install two games on the flash drive and play them on my home computer.

On the computer that I'm using to download....

I made a persistent drive letter assignment for my USB device. In this case the flash drive but it would be the same for the portable USB hard drive. That way, every time you plug the USB device in the computer it gets assigned the same letter. I used "S" but you can use whatever you like. I then added a directory on the flash drive where I want to install the games. I called it "BigFish". Open the BFG Game Manager and add this game installation directory on the "Downloads" tab.

Buy a game!

After I made the purchase and the prompt came up to install, I went to the Game Manager and used the download button there to run the download and installation. I believe using the install button on the BFG website would probably do the same thing but this is how I did it. When the download finished I removed the flash drive without activating the game.

On the computer that I'm using to play....

Again, I made a persistent drive letter assignment for my flash drive using the same letter that I used on the other computer. I opened the Game Manager and used the "Find Games" option. The game comes up in Game Manager with a "Waiting for Activation" status. Once I clicked on the "Activate" button the game was ready to play.

I played one of the games for two hours now so it looks like it's working. Since this was successful for the two games that I tried, I'm going to take the leap and get the portable drive. I'll make any updates that I think may be helpful in this thread.

Congratulations, Cue.
I was never able to get Big Fish games not to automatically activate as soon as they finished installing. Maybe the installer has changed since when I tried to move games.

But it sounds like you've got the process solved.