Moving games fails and compatdata is still deleted

[Saroumane]

Your system information

• Steam client version: 1686880776
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Ubuntu 23.04
• Opted into Steam client beta?: No
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I think that now Steam can't handle anymore moving games from library A to library B when the folder compatdata of library B is symlinked to the one of library A. (Why symlink ? Because it makes sense to have all userdata in one single place) The move fails in the end, with "content locked", and the compatadata/xxxof the game has vanished from library A.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Have compatdata of library B symlinked to the one of library A
2. Use Steam client to initiate a "move" for a (proton) game in library A, to relocate it in library B
3. Watch the move failing with "Content locked"
4. Notice data loss : the compatdata folder of the game has been deleted from library A

[Pockets-byte]

this happened to me as well. hours of gamedata in arma 3 (which isn't cloud sync'd) wiped out because I moved arma to a nfts drive which has to be symlinked to my compatdata folder to work with proton.

Edit: OS: Fedora 35 Beta: No system is up to date

[Saroumane]

Valve is 100% guilty on this.

To begin : deleting user data without user consent is the worst idea a dev can have. (I'm referring to the 'feature' of silently erasing compatdata saves when uninstalling a game) And to make matters worse, in this context the basic checks of a 'move' operation (checking that data has really been duplicated before erasing source) are not done.

@kisak-valve Could you please 'elevate' the priority of this bug before other catastrophic user data losses happen ?