How to prevent Beat Saber from updating

Overview

You can install any old version of Beat Saber directly from Steam and easily prevent that installation from updating using this guide. Works as of [2020-02-01].

Introduction

You might want to prevent Beat Saber from updating since Beat Saber updates usually break mods and other user-created content. This guide will show you how to prevent any future updates.

If you want to return to an older version of Beat Saber, follow this guide.

This process has 2 steps. First, prevent Steam from automatically updating Beat Saber. Next, even if the update isn’t automatic, Steam will still try to make you update. So the second step is to trick Steam into thinking that Beat Saber is already updated.

1. Prevent automatic updates

Unfortunately, there’s no “do not update this game” option in Steam, but there is a “Only update this game when I launch it” option.

To turn this option on…

• right click on Beat Saber
• click “Properties…” in the right click menu
• click on the Updates tab at the top of the new window
• switch the Automatic updates setting to “Only update this game when I launch it”

In the background, the update settings are stored in the following file.

C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappsappmanifest_620980.acf

This file has the update settings stored as AutoUpdateBehavior where 1 means “Only update this game when I launch it”, so you could also edit this file and set the number to the right of AutoUpdateBehavior to 1.

2. Trick Steam into thinking you’ve already updated

What do you do when you see “Beat Saber – Update Required” and there’s an update button instead of a play button? Follow these simple steps to trick steam into thinking you’ve already updated.

• Exit out of steam
• Find the latest Manifest ID from the table in this steam guide or from SteamDB[steamdb.info]. The latest manifest date should be very close to the current date.
• Open this file: C:Program Files (x86)Steamsteamappsappmanifest_620980.acf
  The path may be different depending on where your steamapps folder is located
• Replace the Manifest ID in two places in the file.
  Under InstalledDepots, there should be “manifest” “4932559146183937357” or something similar. Replace the long number with the latest Manifest ID.
  Similarly, under MountedDepots, there should be “620981” “4932559146183937357” or something similar. Replace the long number with the latest Manifest ID.
• Replace “StateFlags” “6” with “StateFlags” “4”
• Save the file
• Re-open steam

If everything went well, you should be able to play Beat Saber without updating it.

StateFlags 4 means “installed” or something and StateFlags 6 means “needs to update” or something.

I assume that when Steam starts, it checks that the InstalledDepots and MountedDepots matches the latest manifest ID. If it doesn’t match, Steam changes the state flag to 6.

That should be it.

Warning: Do not run “Verify Integrity of Game Files”. This will effectively update your files to the latest version.

Note: A common solution I’ve seen is to copy the entire un-updated Beat Saber folder, update, then replace the updated folder with the un-updated folder. This works because actually updating the program updates the appmanifest_620980.acf file.