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OS X I am growing tired of Steam

I have a lot games in my steam library, but very few installed games. I only display installed games in my library... so I only keep games I play often. Most of the games I bought have been installed and deleted. When I delete games, I select "delete local content" from the installed steam library list. What's currently showing in my installed library... is what is in my "\Steam\SteamApps\common" folder. I don't have stray game files that's mentioned here. I'm not sticking up for Steam... just not seeing the issue with stray game files.

There are things about steam that annoys me also. Especially when you buy games through steam that require another game launcher to be installed. I really hate that. :mad:

I think some of you need to upgrade/add SSD/HDD's in your gaming systems.... 10 to 100 gigs isn't a dent in my drive space... and I currently have 500 gigs games installed. 2TB HDD's are dirt cheap... and 1TB SSD's are affordable now.:)
 
erayser said:
I have a lot games in my steam library, but very few installed games. I only display installed games in my library... so I only keep games I play often. Most of the games I bought have been installed and deleted. When I delete games, I select "delete local content" from the installed steam library list. What's currently showing in my installed library... is what is in my "\Steam\SteamApps\common" folder. I don't have stray game files that's mentioned here. I'm not sticking up for Steam... just not seeing the issue with stray game files.

There are things about steam that annoys me also. Especially when you buy games through steam that require another game launcher to be installed. I really hate that. :mad:

I think some of you need to upgrade/add SSD/HDD's in your gaming systems.... 10 to 100 gigs isn't a dent in my drive space... and I currently have 500 gigs games installed. 2TB HDD's are dirt cheap... and 1TB SSD's are affordable now.:)
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You must be selecting an option I've never noticed because the default behavior I have seen for many years now is to leave behind the game folder in common and inside of it typically the game's settings file(s), any screen shots you took in that game and sometimes other misc files like the example I mentioned with EverQuest which had left behind 1 gig of files in total after I selected to remove local content in the client. Why you have no folders in there is beyond me but not something I have ever seen and I've been using Steam for 11 years.

My gaming system is my iMac which has a 1 TB drive and this is enough for my purposes. I cannot speak for other people of course. Your idea of affordable and mine are not necessarily the same as far as 1 TB SSDs goes. I expect for my next system I will then want to move up to greater capacity. I will probably have use for it by that point in time.
 
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Dirtyharry50 said:
You must be selecting an option I've never noticed because the default behavior I have seen for many years now is to leave behind the game folder in common and inside of it typically the game's settings file(s), any screen shots you took in that game and sometimes other misc files like the example I mentioned with EverQuest which had left behind 1 gig of files in total after I selected to remove local content in the client. Why you have no folders in there is beyond me but not something I have ever seen and I've been using Steam for 11 years.

My gaming system is my iMac which has a 1 TB drive and this is enough for my purposes. I cannot speak for other people of course. Your idea of affordable and mine are not necessarily the same as far as 1 TB SSDs goes. I expect for my next system I will then want to move up to greater capacity. I will probably have use for it by that point in time.
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Strange that your screenshots are saved in the game folders in /common. My steam screenshots are automatically saved in /Documents along with game save files... which is on a separate drive. When I delete my games, my saves and screenshots are saved since it's outside of the /steam folder.

I'm not saying that 1TB SSD's are cheap... compared to what 1TB SSD's cost a few years ago, they are much more affordable. When I update my rig next year... hopefully prices keep coming down.

Just to make sure my games deletes in the "\Steam\SteamApps\common" folder... I did a quick test and deleted a game.

steam_lib1.png


steam_lib2.png


Steam Library and "\Steam\SteamApps\common" folder still matches.:cool:
 
EDIT: I just noticed one weird thing on the screenshots. I noticed Five Nights at Freddy's 3 in my library. This is not installed on my computer. However, my son installed it on another computer with my Steam account. LOL... freaking Steam. :p
 
I don't care for how Steam manages screenshots. As I recall, it's hard to identify them for use outside of steam. For screenshots that I don't care if they can be seen in Steam, I use Snagit. The PC version has a free basic mode.
 
I just took a look inside the Steam folder on my Windows XP install in Parallels.

Inside of common I found 29 game folders which were all for games I'd already uninstalled but they were all left behind. I did not bother checking the contents of all these.

I used the client feature to view my screenshot library on disk and took a look at where Steam put all the screen shots I took recently playing Max Payne 2. I was wrong about them being in Common but I was right about them being saved in the Steam folder structure. They were buried multiple numbered folders deep under a top level folder within Steam called User Data.

There is no question that Steam will leave plenty of stuff behind upon removing a game within the client. I've seen it do this over and over for years. Why someone else would not see the same behavior is beyond me unless it is somehow different if the Steam library is kept on an external drive but that really makes no sense to me. I don't know why they would deliberately code a different behavior for that case.

Examining common on my Mac install which can be found within the Steam folder under library/application support I note the same behavior. I see games that are no longer installed on this system but still have folders with stuff in them even though the games were removed via the client.

So whether it be Windows version or Mac version I am seeing this behavior of leaving behind folders in common after removing games via the Steam client. I also note screen shots being saved under User Data in this same buried Steam folder with the Mac version and just like on the windows side they are further buried multiple levels deep in more folders.

Steam is not a Mac-like app in many ways not the least of which is the failure to conform to established standards for app installations and data storage. It is obvious why this is so. It would have been a lot more work to create a client that installed itself and kept its data according to OS X standards not to mention installing the games themselves into the Applications folder where they belong. I'll give Origin a little credit here. They at least do the right thing by installing games into Applications where they should be installed.

By the way, just as an aside in support of earlier complaints I made, just now when trying to open Steam's Mac client I was quickly greeted by the pretty little spinning beachball of doom. It was unresponsive and I had to kill it and start it again. Stuff like this is why I am fed up. They do not adhere to system standards and their client app is still buggy even after all this time.

So even though you may upload certain screen shots to Steam cloud, every single one you take including the cloud uploads remains on your local disk unless you go in there and manually delete them.

I understand that there are some exceptions to this rule in Windows where by convention some games will store their saves in the documents folder and possibly screen shots if using the game's functionality for them vs Steam's feature which I wouldn't expect to do that only for a choice few games.

For example, when setting up Bethesda RPGs with Steam in Wineskin, the folders for saves and settings are created in Documents/My Games which presumably is the behavior for these in Windows. When I played Max Payne 2 it also kept its saves in Documents in it's own Max Payne 2 Saves folder. Meantime settings for the game were kept in its Steam folder.

Unlike with the Mac and OS X native games, there isn't a lot of consistency in the Windows world when it comes to saving data, etc. for games. I note your screenshot is of a Windows install and perhaps this explains the variances you see.

That said, I am seeing stuff left behind within Steam's folder structure for removed games as noted above in both the OS X and Windows worlds so I have no idea why you don't. I cannot imagine that either of us has a specially coded version of Steam that would differ from one another so I do not know how to explain the difference in behavior that you report. I can only guess that the differences may be on a game by game basis or something because otherwise this makes no sense to me.
 
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erayser said:
EDIT: I just noticed one weird thing on the screenshots. I noticed Five Nights at Freddy's 3 in my library. This is not installed on my computer. However, my son installed it on another computer with my Steam account. LOL... freaking Steam. :p
Click to expand...

A likely story. You have now been found out! lol
 
Dirtyharry50 said:
A likely story. You have now been found out! lol
Click to expand...

Found out about what? it's the opposite of what you mentioned. In my /common directory, it's not installed... meaning no stray Freddy's 3 game files. The weird thing is... It was never installed on my computer. It may have do with my steam account since my kid used it to install Freddy's 3 on another computer... and probably why it shows in my library. I agree there are a annoyances with Steam... It just doesn't bother me as much... except purchasing games from steam that requires another game launcher.
 
erayser said:
Found out about what? it's the opposite of what you mentioned. In my /common directory, it's not installed... meaning no stray Freddy's 3 game files. The weird thing is... It was never installed on my computer. It may have do with my steam account since my kid used it to install Freddy's 3 on another computer... and probably why it shows in my library. I agree there are a annoyances with Steam... It just doesn't bother me as much... except purchasing games from steam that requires another game launcher.
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I meant that as a joke, implying you'd been found out playing that kid's game because there it was on your computer, that's all.

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I am presently working on playing the games I own which are likely to require bootcamp, many of which are already installed there. The rest I will try in Parallels first to save me reboots.

It will be interesting to see when I have uninstalled every single game in bootcamp how much space at that point is taken up by the Steam folder and its contents.

It will also be interesting to see how large Windows has grown with all the various dll and other support files for games installed there. Nothing else but games has ever been installed into my bootcamp partition with the exception of Evernote.

My guess is Steam will be more sizable than a fresh Steam install, possibly a lot more and Windows will be as well.
 
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