Steam games all deleted

[saward]

So it appears that steam has deleted all my games. I've done a space visualisation of my home folder, and I cannot see them anywhere. The space used by the files found seems to match that which df -h reports as used, so I don't think they're hiding anywhere else.

Was using gnome 3 shell, and had some issues. Couldn't move a window without the shell appearing to no longer be interactive. Restarted X a couple of times with ctrl-alt-del. May or may not have had something to do with me trying to use: LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1

Anyway, finally started up steam and it appeared to be updating and failing. Cancelled since it took a while a couple of times, and started. Ran it from the console instead so I could see what happened. Waiting patiently lead to the update completing, and the discovery that my games were missing. Console output available at https://gist.github.com/saward/ecd01a8f56656d0b0110

[lupino3]

Had the same issue, happened twice to me in the last 2 days. (username: spadaccio)

I was trying to start a game from the command line, using the optirun wrapper to make the game use my discrete GPU (it worked other times) and then the game just disappeared from under my nose : 23:05 ~$ cd .local/share/Steam/steamapps/ 23:05 steamapps$ ls appmanifest_250900.acf common downloading sourcemods 23:06 steamapps$ cd common/ 23:06 common$ ls The Binding of Isaac Rebirth 23:06 common$ cd The\ Binding\ of\ Isaac\ Rebirth/ 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ ls changelog.txt isaac.i386 isaac.x64 lib32 lib64 resources run-i386.sh run-x64.sh savedatapath.txt 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ optirun ./run-x64.sh [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; SteamAPI_IsSteamRunning() failed. [S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; unable to locate a running instance of Steam, or a local steamclient.so. 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ Running Steam on sabayon 64-bit STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically [2014-12-02 23:06:11] Startup - updater built Nov 21 2014 16:23:41 Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1416617579) [VGL] ERROR: Could not open display :8. Installing bootstrap /home/andrea/.local/share/Steam/bootstrap.tar.xz Reset complete! Restarting Steam by request... Running Steam on sabayon 64-bit STEAM_RUNTIME has been set by the user to: /home/andrea/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime ILocalize::AddFile() failed to load file "public/steambootstrapper_english.txt". [2014-12-02 23:06:12] Startup - updater built Aug 26 2014 15:35:42 Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/version(1416617579_client) [VGL] ERROR: Could not open display :8.

[ Here the game failed to use the other GPU, not sure why, so I tried to run glxgears/glxspheres and they succeeded ]

23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch 0000:01:00.0 OFF 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ optirun glxgears shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory ^C[ 108.508824] [WARN]Received Interrupt signal. 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ optirun glxspheres shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory Polygons in scene: 62464 Visual ID of window: 0x20 Context is Direct OpenGL Renderer: GeForce GT 620M/PCIe/SSE2 141.238271 frames/sec - 140.559763 Mpixels/sec ^C[ 117.147186] [WARN]Received Interrupt signal.

[ as you can see, the commands failed with current directory not existing, I didn't pay attention to that. Now I try starting the game ]

23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ optirun ./run-x64.sh shell-init: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory sh_makepath: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory /usr/bin/vglrun: line 241: /home/andrea/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/The Binding of Isaac Rebirth/run-x64.sh: No such file or directory 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ ls 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ ls -l total 0 23:06 The Binding of Isaac Rebirth$ cd .. cd: error retrieving current directory: getcwd: cannot access parent directories: No such file or directory

The game got deleted while I was in that directory. I started steam and it prompted me to re-login and I had to download the game again.

Is this because I was trying to run the game from the command line?

[saward]

For what it's worth, this has not happened to me again since the first time (so far!).

[0x726f62]

Take a look in the folder ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/.save 3 days ago my steam client crashed and moved ~/.local/share/Steam/Steamapps into ~/.local/share/Steam/.save/steamapps

I just had to move it back and restart steam client.

EDIT: Sorry, i haven't noticed that you mention usage of df -h. This could different issue from what i am describing.

[lupino3]

Yes, unfortunately there is no such directory (.save).

I noticed that if I run the games when the Steam client is open, I don't get this issue. It smells like some sort of protection, I don't know.

[saward]

EDIT: Sorry, i haven't noticed that you mention usage of df -h. This could different issue from what i am describing.

Yeah, and at the time I noticed my free space was more than I thought it should have been, by about what I would have thought the games took up.

[ghost]

Not the exact same problem, but it fits into this, I guess.

For me the Games are gone inside my library after every restart of my PC, also the login data is not saved by Steam. The files are not gone, the SteamApps folder is there and my games are also in that common folder. However, when I restart Steam, the Library is intact again, till I do a restart of my PC.

I'm in the Steam beta branch and this behaviour starts with the last update.

[jamieweb]

Same problem for me today. I pressed cancel while the steam updater was running as I wasn't connected to the internet. When I connected, steam had deleted itself and all of my games. I had to reinstall. Running on ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Latest version of steam from the Steam website.

[nortexoid]

Same thing just happened to me. The updater was stuck, so I canceled it. I then reopened Steam and was greeted by the login screen, even though it's set to automatically login. All my installed games were missing (the whole folder ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/ was missing).

Fortunately I back everything up semi-regularly so it wasn't much of a hassle, but damn!

UPDATE: When restoring games from a backup drive, steam won't discover existing Dota 2 files, though it will discover other games, such as Left 4 Dead 2.

[enricoluigi]

Just happened to me, steamapps folder has been deleted now i cant run steam, "unable to connect to x"

[LakeByTheWoods]

Chiming in to say it happened to me as well. Hit cancel on the updater, logged in, games are gone.

[BenjaminSchaaf]

Just wanted to note: This happened to me as well. Pressed cancel on the updater. Once it opened again it seemed that two instances of the updater opened. One hung while the other completed. After a error message about missing 32bit libraries. Then steam started as normal but did not remember my login details and all my games are now gone.

[nortexoid]

Come on, this just happened to me again! There wasn't even anything unusual like an updater issue. It wouldn't be such a problem if it could rediscover my backup and not have to download everything from the internet again.

[jamieweb]

I've noticed that if you ever open Steam and it doesn't automatically log you in, logging in will cause the deletion of your games. If you aren't automatically logged in, close the login box and fully exit Steam. When you launch Steam again it should log you in and your games will still be there.

Cancelling the auto updater seems to always delete your games.

[JohnMcLear]

Steam updated and deleted all my games so +1.

[Martinsos]

Same happens to me on archlinux, after each update all games get deleted!

[LegitGamez]

Good to know i'm not like Rhianna being the only one with this in the world. For me it crashed when I tried to launch ArmA 3 and I couldn't verify to get a missing exe. Steam crashed and didn't automatically log me in. BOOM! Gone! 10 times!

[ashishmadeti]

Happened to me 3 times now. Its very annoying. I am on Kubuntu 15.04 and my steam folder is symlinked to a folder in my external drive.

[kmf]

Steam updated and deleted all my games so +1.

[WhiteWolf753]

Steam just delete GTA V and Tomb Raider. It's 3 times now. GG!

[Tele42]

@WhiteWolf753 what OS are you on? This issue report was limited to linux reports, but if there's a cross platform issue, that might lead a valve dev to check elsewhere in the client.

[Yaksinikos]

@WhiteWolf753 if you use wine, it could be because of your unplugged hard-drive, where your games are installed! Try adding a new game-library. It fixed it for me!

[WhiteWolf753]

I have Windows 10 Pro x64

[Yaksinikos]

@WhiteWolf753 This here is about Steam for Linux :laughing:

[FeralBytes]

I too was affected by this... restored the games by mv the steamapps folder from .save but in doing so lost my saved games....

[Martinsos]

This is not a problem for me any more - Steam updates now without deleting any games.

[FeralBytes]

I too was affected by this... restored the games by mv the steamapps folder from .save but in doing so lost my saved games....

[robertc]

Just happened to me: just finished downloading Mad Max, restarted Steam, all games gone from disk. Additionally Steam is now adamant it wants to put my games into ~/Steam instead of ~/.local/share/Steam. It seems to be failing to pick up directories in the launch script, I kept getting an error at line 94:

Setting up Steam content in /.local/share/Steam
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/.local’: Permission denied
/usr/bin/steam: line 98: cd: /.local/share/Steam: No such file or directory

I had to hardcode the script to use ~/.local/share/Steam to get it to run at all.

[thefarwind]

hmm, just chiming in to say this has happened to me as well.

[redog]

this happened to me. Updated my nvidia-drivers and tried to launch steam....steam ran in the background but never would launch...after I rebooted steam launched but deleted the folder with all the game content and any custom class configurations and binds I had.....this is the third time something has happened causing me to download the entire game library again.

[xcxlt]

this just happened to me for the third time. When it happened for the first and the second time, I was playing CS:GO and the game just froze. I pressed ctrl+alt+f1 and ubuntu gave an error and deleted the Steam folder. third time, however, steam wouldn't open so I killed the process and folder got emptied but with a .save folder inside. And the .save folder had the exact copy of the Steam folder. just like @Pr0b described.

[cfabyss]

This happened to me today, too. I checked the .save directory, but nothing was there. I did attempt to verify integrity of game cache for the only games I had installed - maybe this has something to do with why .save was not populated?

[RaJiska]

Still happening here. No .save file could be found.

It happens when the computer does not close itself correctly. Upon restarting Steam after rebooting, it makes an update of ~270 MB and asks me again if I have an account on Steam.

[Matz05]

This just happened to me today as well. I think I may have cancelled an auto-update with the 'cancel' button at some point (which I would expect would leave things in a valid state and retry the installation later), and then Steam spends an awful long time updating next time, requires me to re-authenticate my computer as 'a new computer' (which is odd in itself), and then I find out that my entire library has been deleted, and that this is a known, very old problem with their Linux client which they refused to fix for all this time. Trying the manual restore from the .save folder now, but first I'm backing it up to an external disk because I lack the disk space for a second copy. Very disappointed, this final straw has codified the plan I was already following: I don't plan to buy anything from Valve Corporation ever again. DRM-free only for me.

Running Linux here, of course, as the other sufferers mostly seem to.

EDIT: Moving the contents of the steamapps ("SteamApps" in the backup, seems their backup script is changing case, which could cause some trouble on non-Windows systems...) and userdata folders from (steam root)/.save to their original locations, overwriting the empty ones and their contents, seems to have fixed the problems caused by the issue this time. I'll be keeping backups of those from now on, I guess. Kind of disappointing that Steam is the single most temperamental and annoying piece of software on my machine, though, given how it's also backed by the largest share of the economy by far!

EDIT: (mainly directed at RaJiska) If you can't find the .save folder, check to make sure that whatever you're checking with is set to show hidden files/folders (those that begin with a '.'). Some software (for example, the ls command) hides them by default, and you have to specifically ask for them in some way (usually a menu option on your GUI file browser or a flag for command-line stuff). Of course, it could also be that it's simply not there for you.

[miguev]

This just happened to me, still a thing in 2018 on Ubuntu Studio 17.10.

TL;DR: rm -f .steampid .steam/steam.pid .steam/steam.pipe

My 100+ games were still installed taking 360G+ under .local/share/Steam/ ─ as you can imagine I was not looking forward to reinstalling even one of them, let alone losing all my progress.

Instead, in the old traditions of Un*x things that crash and then break, Steam seems to have left behind residual files that somehow tricked it into misbehaving. Other applications abort with a clear error message telling you to delete such files, Steam does not. So I just exit Steam, delete those files above, then start Steam again and all my installed games (and progress in them) are back!

Note: I did not interrupt the updater or forced Steam to end with "Exit now" or anything like that, but I am having more kernel lockups ever since the patches for Meltdown, may be just coincidence but the timing aligns.

[kmf]

Just happened to me. Again.

[rlka]

Yup, have the same problem now. Just started my steam as always, message "Updating User Configuration" was shown and no settings could be saved now.

[shimajan]

Launching Steam on Linux just deleted the entirety of Rainbow Six Siege from my hard drive. It takes many hours preallocating to reinstall, very sad.

[Tviljan]

Also files deleted from several games. Here sis content_log.txt

[2020-12-06 17:12:32] Loaded 10 apps from install folder "/home/xx/.local/share/Steam/steamapps\appmanifest_*.acf".
[2020-12-06 17:12:32] Loaded 2 apps from install folder "/home/xx/.local/share/SteamLibrary/steamapps\appmanifest_*.acf".
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 scheduler update : Priority Last, timeSinceLastPlayed=15460, appDisableSecondsRemaining=0
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 state changed : Update Required,Fully Installed,Update Queued,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 358270 scheduler update : Priority Last, timeSinceLastPlayed=14024, appDisableSecondsRemaining=0
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 358270 state changed : Update Required,Fully Installed,Update Queued,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 state changed : Update Required,Fully Installed,Update Queued,Update Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,Reconfiguring,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,Validating,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update started : download 0/0, store 0/0, reuse 0/0, delta 0/0, stage 0/0 
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 has no changes, active: 32371 (4122010938027300909), target: 
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 state changed : Update Required,Fully Installed,Update Queued,Update Running,Update Started,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,Committing,
[2020-12-06 17:12:35] AppID 32370 starting commit from "/home/xx/.local/share/SteamLibrary/steamapps/downloading/32370" to "/home/xx/.local/share/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common/swkotor" : 0 updated, 0 moved, 16044 deleted files
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 state changed : Fully Installed,Update Queued,Update Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 finished update, mounted depots (BuildID 4143502) : 
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 update changed : Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 update changed : None
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 state changed : Fully Installed,Update Queued,
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 state changed : Fully Installed,
[2020-12-06 17:12:37] AppID 32370 scheduler finished : removed from schedule
[2020-12-06 17:12:38] AppID 358270 state changed : Update Required,Fully Installed,Update Queued,Update Running,
[2020-12-06 17:12:38] AppID 358280 state changed : Fully Installed,Shared Only,Update Running,