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Either it's the way you handle Steam (not properly letting it sync or force closing), interference by security programs or types of disk drives (external ones often cause issue due to power management).
Yeah because you want to make sure that you have the ability to cover the worst case scenario. It allows the priocess to continue in automated fashion. Why do that prior to discovery? Because There is a chance that some percentage of files will have to be reinstalled . Worst case scenario it discovers no files. Doing the other way around creates a possibility for time wasting and interruption.
So would fixing whatever Drive error keeps causing that liost game issue.
You do realize the majority of gamers seldom if ever experience the issue yuou're talking about right. WHich means its not the client.. its ye system,
The game files are still there and the game still works fine if I launch the .exe from the file explorer, so I don't think it's a drive issue.
I don't disagree there there's a problem with my system and the client, but that doesn't absolve the Steam client here. There's something happening that causing Steam to no longer recognize a game installation that is still there and functioning.
I realize the suggestion is a work around, but it seems like a much simpler ask than figuring out what is causing this "loss" issue. I've already submitted support tickets with system file logs to that end.
And that this is happening on yopur system and not millions of others implies an issue on your system where the client is installed.
Something is going wrong there, likely something with your filesystem.
Change a provenly effective flow for the sake of a few edgecase scenarios where the user's system is clearly the issue? T How does that seem reasonable or logical.
My suggestion is that you run a full suite of fille system check. DIsksurface and everything.
https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8379-RYIP-2998
Thanks for the tip, google also pointed me to that post and those suggestions are the first things I tried. That not working is what lead me to submit a support request and subsequently make this suggestion. Specifically, the "Reinstalling games" is what lead to this idea. As I couldn't reinstall due to lack of space error dialog preventing the existing file check from occurring. The game files were still there and operational. On a side note, the work around for me was to delete other games off the drive until there was enough space to "reinstall". At which point Steam no longer threw the "disk space" error dialog and went on to recognize the existing files and updated the game's status to installed without having to redownload the content. Accessing that already existing functionality discretely is the core intent of this suggestion.
It is always best to leave a set amount free to avoid issues. I personally leave 25% free on all my drives to avoid issues and not just for Steam.
Just double-checking: among the first things you tried, you also explicitly close Steam before you shut down your computer?
When you issue a shutdown command, Windows gives all applications that are still running approx. 5 seconds to flush out their state and shut down gracefully. After that, it will just kill processes that are not marked as inside a critical section and it will do so indiscriminately.
Within those 5 seconds processes can respond to the notification for shutdown with a special reply that asks the OS to give it more time. Such processes then get something like 30 seconds max instead, before the killing commences anyway.
If you finish playing a game and then immediately shut down without first manually closing Steam, then Steam can still be overloaded with other post-game jobs it has to do - including e.g. cloud syncing save storage. It won't be able to cope with a shutdown on top of that and finish all of that in time.
The result is that Windows will come around and say: "Too bad, time's up" -- and if that happens and Windows kills the Steam processes at the wrong time, the data stores that indicate installation state of library titles can end up being corrupted because they weren't fully flushed out to disk yet.
Yes, I have a Steam Library folder on my C: and G: drives. Steam itself is on the C: drive and ARK is installed in the library on the G: drive. The strange thing is not all the games on that drive that were showing up as uninstalled, this was the only one.
Agreed, and I had about 240 GB free on a 1 TB drive. ARK is just an incredible hog at 330 GB. Steam was essentially requiring me to have 660 GB dedicated to the game to do the reinstall process. 330 GB for the files already there, and 330 GB allocated for installing it again. I definitely realize this is very odd scenario and that vast majority of games would never run into this issue. I'm just thinking that since this "discover existing files" functionality is already baked into Steam, it'd be in both my interest and Valve's interest to be able to access that and not download hundreds of GB of data needlessly. As I mentioned, after I deleted other games, that process worked fine without the need to redownload the content.
Regarding this shutdown comment. I did experience a power failure the night before this issue manifested. I wasn't actively on my computer at the time, but the computer was on and Steam would have been running. I suppose ARK might have been updating at the time, an expansion was just recently released and there have been a lot of client updates. I did note the power failure in my support request, however, I didn't mention it here as the intent of the suggestion is to address the UX once a game has been corrupted.
Thanks for the update as the main point on the link I provided was the avoidance of using external drives.
Hopefully the problem you outlined will not be an issue for you in the future.