What makes a game uninstall itself?getting annoying.

[RADKILLA[420]]

I have very slow internet,and when a game uninstalls it can take days to download.grrrrr.

[Daxank]

Faulty hard drive

[RADKILLA[420]]

Any reason that would happen?new laptop.

[AmsterdamHeavy]

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8379-RYIP-2998

[RADKILLA[420]]

RAD!thanks for the help guys.much appreciated.

[uFrost]

Are you 100% sure that games uninstall themselves, or do they just appear so in your steam library?
If the game appears to be uninstalled from your library but game files are still in their folders then you can just press Install to verify your game files which takes few minutes to finish which works most of the time. When it doesn't work (mostly with games that have their own launchers such as Warframe, Smite, Elder Scrolls Online etc) then you have to create an appmanifest file for that specific game.

This happens when steam appmanifest.acf files go missing and the cause of this is when steam doesn't shut down properly. They are located in your steam installation folder "Steam/steamapps" and are used by steam to check what games is currently installed on your pc, last user that played that game, last update, game size etc.

When your looking at your appmanifest files you will see random numbers at the end of their name. For example appmanifest_440.acf is used for Team Fortress 2, you know this by looking at the tf2 steam store page url and you will find those numbers in there, or you can just open up that file with a text editor and check what game it belongs to.

To prevent this in the future you can just save your appmanifest files to a different folder to keep them safe and when a game disappears again you can just place the one you saved or you can ask your friend for their appmanifest file if they have that game installed.
Third way is to create the appmanifest file yourself by creating a text file and paste the following:

"AppState"
{
	"appid"		"440"
	"Universe"		"1"
	"name"		"Team Fortress 2"
	"StateFlags"		"4"
	"installdir"		"Team Fortress 2"
	"LastUpdated"		"1553702378"
	"UpdateResult"		"0"
	"SizeOnDisk"		"22736509397"
	"buildid"		"3682091"
	"LastOwner"		"76561198051436498"
	"BytesToDownload"		"0"
	"BytesDownloaded"		"0"
	"AutoUpdateBehavior"		"0"
	"AllowOtherDownloadsWhileRunning"		"0"
	"ScheduledAutoUpdate"		"0"
	"UserConfig"
	{
		"language"		"english"
	}
	"InstalledDepots"
	{
		"441"
		{
			"manifest"		"8952784253225315451"
		}
		"440"
		{
			"manifest"		"1118032470228587934"
		}
		"232251"
		{
			"manifest"		"8996157037660307857"
		}
	}
	"MountedDepots"
	{
		"441"		"8952784253225315451"
		"440"		"1118032470228587934"
		"232251"		"8996157037660307857"
	}
	"SharedDepots"
	{
		"228990"		"228980"
	}
}

Name the file "appmanifest_440.acf" in case your creating one for tf2 and change Save as Type to "All Files" and restart steam after creating this.

When creating your own manifest file, make sure to type in the correct appid, name, installdir, InstalledDepots, MountedDepots, SharedDepots and make sure StateFlags is set to 4 so it tells your steam that everything is downloaded and ready to run.
LastUpdated, SizeOnDisk, buildid and LastOwner doesn't seem to affect this, but if it doesn't work then make sure to update these numbers to be up to date which you can get from a friend or something.

Here's a great guide on this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379830692

Edit: Also, the manifest i provided most likely won't work for any game besides tf2 because InstalledDepots, MountedDepots, SharedDepots are different and sometimes a reference to a script is needed. So it's best to find an existing manifest and plonk it in where it's needed.

Another edit: Scrap first half of the first edit i made. Seems like some stuff in those depots is legacy, doesn't exist anymore. Guessing it won't hurt if "441" and "232251" are used in other manifest files, but still, some manifest files require additional stuff such as "InstallScript".

[↑↑↓↓←→←→BASelect]

Originally posted by uFrost:

Are you 100% sure that games uninstall themselves, or do they just appear so in your steam library?
If the game appears to be uninstalled from your library but game files are still in their folders then you can just press Install to verify your game files which takes few minutes to finish which works most of the time. When it doesn't work (mostly with games that have their own launchers such as Warframe, Smite, Elder Scrolls Online etc) then you have to create an appmanifest file for that specific game.

This happens when steam appmanifest.acf files go missing and the cause of this is when steam doesn't shut down properly. They are located in your steam installation folder "Steam/steamapps" and are used by steam to check what games is currently installed on your pc, last user that played that game, last update, game size etc.

When your looking at your appmanifest files you will see random numbers at the end of their name. For example appmanifest_440.acf is used for Team Fortress 2, you know this by looking at the tf2 steam store page url and you will find those numbers in there, or you can just open up that file with a text editor and check what game it belongs to.

To prevent this in the future you can just save your appmanifest files to a different folder to keep them safe and when a game disappears again you can just place the one you saved or you can ask your friend for their appmanifest file if they have that game installed.
Third way is to create the appmanifest file yourself by creating a text file and paste the following:

"AppState"
{
	"appid"		"440"
	"Universe"		"1"
	"name"		"Team Fortress 2"
	"StateFlags"		"4"
	"installdir"		"Team Fortress 2"
	"LastUpdated"		"1553702378"
	"UpdateResult"		"0"
	"SizeOnDisk"		"22736509397"
	"buildid"		"3682091"
	"LastOwner"		"76561198051436498"
	"BytesToDownload"		"0"
	"BytesDownloaded"		"0"
	"AutoUpdateBehavior"		"0"
	"AllowOtherDownloadsWhileRunning"		"0"
	"ScheduledAutoUpdate"		"0"
	"UserConfig"
	{
		"language"		"english"
	}
	"InstalledDepots"
	{
		"441"
		{
			"manifest"		"8952784253225315451"
		}
		"440"
		{
			"manifest"		"1118032470228587934"
		}
		"232251"
		{
			"manifest"		"8996157037660307857"
		}
	}
	"MountedDepots"
	{
		"441"		"8952784253225315451"
		"440"		"1118032470228587934"
		"232251"		"8996157037660307857"
	}
	"SharedDepots"
	{
		"228990"		"228980"
	}
}

Name the file "appmanifest_440.acf" in case your creating one for tf2 and change Save as Type to "All Files" and restart steam after creating this.

When creating your own manifest file, make sure to type in the correct appid, name and installdir and make sure StateFlags is set to 4 so it tells your steam that everything is downloaded and ready to run.
LastUpdated, SizeOnDisk, buildid and LastOwner doesn't seem to affect this, but if it doesn't work then make sure to update these numbers to be up to date which you can get from a friend or something.

Here's a great guide on this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=379830692

To add to this. You can use google and put in the search box steam_appid then the number. To see what app number is for what game.
Like steam_appid 550 google will tell you it's for left 4 dead 2.

[RADKILLA[420]]

hmmmmmm,interesting..

[crgzero]

Fallout 76 uninstalls itself. Bethesda bugs though, hell I wouldn't put anything past those idiots.

[uFrost]

Originally posted by crgzero:

Fallout 76 uninstalls itself. Bethesda bugs though, hell I wouldn't put anything past those idiots.

But that's not on steam... yet!