why does steam lie to me?

adolf hamster · 31 Oct 2017 at 18:25

just cleared out ~660gb of old game installs because steam's version of "uninstalling" seems to be "telling you it's uninstalled and leaving it right there"

cmon, srsly :mad:

oh, and just to bash origin as well for installing games without you actually installing them, no wonder their downloads seem so fast

G-MAN2004 · 31 Oct 2017 at 18:54

Oh wow, I've just checked and there's loads of crap left over in the steamapps folder. No wonder I'm running out of space.

Cheers.

hornetstinger · 31 Oct 2017 at 18:55

Where are these old files you can delete?

G-MAN2004 · 31 Oct 2017 at 18:57

hornetstinger said:
Where are these old files you can delete?

Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common

There's probably more in the other folders too.

neoboy · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:07

Yup, bit of a pain frankly

arc@css · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:08

Use with care, but I tend to run something like Revo Uninstaller to get rid of unwanted files.

Fishbait · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:10

Not quite what you're after, but still handy.

https://www.ghacks.net/2016/11/29/steam-cleaner-clear-temporary-steam-origin-uplay-and-gog-data/

Used it on steam & gog junk in the past, worked fine.
Tend to do it all manually these days though.

Nate75 · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:22

Just gave Steam Cleaner a whirl. 30GB recovered

adolf hamster · 31 Oct 2017 at 19:36

i guess mine was bad because i used to just have everything installed until i ran out of space then cleared it out.

still annoying, why won't it just clear everything up when it uninstalls?

had to go through with ccleaner after to sort the registry thanks to steam "uninstalling" but not letting windows know it was uninstalled so i had a list full of programs that were still there.

FlakGunna · 31 Oct 2017 at 23:19

arc@css said:
Use with care, but I tend to run something like Revo Uninstaller to get rid of unwanted files.

I use the same. It gets rid of registry entries and unwanted crap too.

Hiijinx · 1 Nov 2017 at 15:59

Damn I never even thought to check if it left files - thanks for this!

You just assume "uninstall" does just that ...

Glanza · 1 Nov 2017 at 16:28

I give Steamcleaner a run once a month to get back any space that's been lost if I've been installing games.

x-st · 1 Nov 2017 at 16:39

If you're not uninstalling completely but still want to save space on install packages that are no longer required then Tikione Steam Cleaner is also useful -
https://github.com/jonathanlermitage/tikione-steam-cleaner
It's a Steam/GOG/Origin games redistributable packages finder and remover.

arc@css · 1 Nov 2017 at 16:41

Related to this though different software (Adobe Premiere Pro), but cleaning out the media cache and other such files resulted in freeing up well over 100GB.

Evian · 1 Nov 2017 at 17:14

I've only got 3.5GB of excess files according to Steamcleaner but some of those are related to CSGO which is still installed, I'm just going to leave it in case anything goes wrong.

Malevolence · 1 Nov 2017 at 18:49

Well I ran that SteamCleaner and it did **** all. Afterwards I still found over 12GB of crap sitting in the Steam folder, including a folder for something called OpenVR (or something like that) that was just shy of a gig that I have never heard of before, let alone downloaded. I don't even have VR capabilities.

adolf hamster · 1 Nov 2017 at 20:11

Malevolence said:
Well I ran that SteamCleaner and it did **** all. Afterwards I still found over 12GB of crap sitting in the Steam folder, including a folder for something called OpenVR (or something like that) that was just shy of a gig that I have never heard of before, let alone downloaded. I don't even have VR capabilities.

i was the same, had steam vr

you might want to check origin too- i had a bunch of games installed that i got on origin's free deals but never actually downloaded (or at least i didn't conciously download them)

LeMson · 1 Nov 2017 at 20:19

Steam sits on it's own 4TB hdd, no probs here

Rifte · 2 Nov 2017 at 04:20

31 gigs it found and removed.....seems a little too good to be true?

I am half expecting to fire up some of these games and they require file validation again etc....

I will see

Fishbait · 2 Nov 2017 at 07:43

Rifte said:
31 gigs it found and removed.....seems a little too good to be true?

I am half expecting to fire up some of these games and they require file validation again etc....

I will see

That's one good way of getting you to play your back catalogue