Uninstalling games from Steam library, is anything left behind?

[SpongeBob]

I uninstalled a few big games, and noticed I ended up having a few GB less memory than I had before installing them. Are there any files that you can miss when you uninstall the games from Steam?

[Darren]

Plenty. Some games put saves in My Documents for example.

Redistributables like .NET or VC runtimes also stay installed.

[Kazumiko-]

XDXD LOLOL :V

[Vaemer-Riit]

Any files not part of the original install (for example Mods) that are in the games folder are also left behind.

[SpongeBob]

I do remember some of the games also installing that Microsoft visual C++/etc, do those really end up taking gigabytes of memory, I currently only have a small SSD, so want to clear up memory wherever I can.

[Ogami]

Mods and save files can take a lot of stuff. My Fallout 4 left 3 GB of save files behind after uninstalling. Also mods you need to delete manually.

[SpongeBob]

Originally posted by Ogami:

Mods and save files can take a lot of stuff. My Fallout 4 left 3 GB of save files behind after uninstalling. Also mods you need to delete manually.

Where are those installed usually? I look in steam/steamapps/common, and those files are all empty.

[Vaemer-Riit]

Mods are normally in the games folder and you can just delete the games folder after uninstalling it.

Save files can be in a few places:

1: The Game folder, just delete the game folder.
2: The My Documents folder, you will have to locate the save folder for the game. Google is helpful for game specific information.

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

There are some programs, like I know Advanced UnInstaller is one title but I don't know if it's safe and trusted , IObit UnInstaller maybe? Whatever. There's some programs which either have some records of files which are installed I think or which keep track of what files are written when you install something though I personally wouldn't feel all that safe just undoing all that in case some other process made some writes too but maybe they just log the outcome of one specific process and its child-processes or something, I don't know.
Some programs on Windows don't have uninstallers and that's horrible for all I care. OS X doesn't use uninstallers at all normally and the idea there is that the files end up in this one folder / image and that you just remove that one but the program COULD place files at other places too.

Personally I think single directories or a complete log of what has been installed like with a Linux package manager or whatever would be best.
Like on the Amiga files could either be in the program folder of the file you where trying to run or in the system folders but it was kinda up to you if you keept the files in whateverprogram/libs or copied them to libs: (which would be sys:(/)libs which is /libs on the drive you booted from.)

I hate that save-files for instance could end up anywhere because there's no standard. Microsoft should have some guide-lines which decide that they should all be in "Save-files" in the user directory or whatever or all programs could be installed something like:

C:\Program Files\Adobe Photoshop\installation
C:\Program Files\Adobe Photoshop\misc or content or run or other or whatever you want to call the folder for files which may be created and saved by running the software. In it it would of course had been nice if the folders had clear names such as saves. temp, configuration/etc, ..

I don't know what has been installed and I get the impression in regard of Visual C++ and .NET and so on that those can possibly be installed multiple times over one time for each software? Or is it just that it install a very huge amount of versions of it and that's why so many games install it? Maybe uninstalling a game in Steam which had such dependencies doesn't remove those dependencies. If I knew what games it was maybe I could had googled for you.

[The Rock God]

Originally posted by Etnopluralism / Aliquis:

I hate that save-files for instance could end up anywhere because there's no standard. Microsoft should have some guide-lines which decide that they should all be in "Save-files" in the user directory or whatever...

Like the My Games folder, which is where Microsoft would like companies to put them? (And is where most games do.)

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

Originally posted by The Rock God:

Originally posted by Etnopluralism / Aliquis:

I hate that save-files for instance could end up anywhere because there's no standard. Microsoft should have some guide-lines which decide that they should all be in "Save-files" in the user directory or whatever...

Like the My Games folder, which is where Microsoft would like companies to put them? (And is where most games do.)

I know about the existance of the folder and I fully support them only storing their data there.

(I don't necessarily support it being in My documents though.)