14 DAY TRIAL // The latest SteamOS update is causing some problems to some of the users and it looks like it can lead to the erasure of the installed games, without any kind of warning or signs.
A couple of very similar posts have been made on the official Steam forums about an issue that causes users to lose their installed games, most likely after a system-wide update. The problem is not considered very important because it's not being reported a lot, but there are also not that many SteamOS users out there.
In any case, losing the installed games from Steam is actually quite a common problem and it happened already for the users of the regular client. For some reason, the application misplaces the path to the library, but that's easily fixable. That usually happened with the Beta version of Steam and users know they are taking a risk. It doesn't mean that you lose the game from the library though, just the installation.
The latest SteamOS update can be harmful
Losing the installed games is not the end of the world, but it can be an issue when those games are pretty large and you need to redownload them. It can also become a problem if you live in an area with poor internet connection or traffic caps.
"Went to turn on my Steambox this morning and there was an update. The background for the update had a white screen which I thought was funny. However after it was done it had me go through the initial setup again. I plugged in my info and saw all the games I had installed locally were missing. I thought I just needed to hit install to register the games like I do on windows but it just started downloading the game again. What the hell?" wrote a user on the Steam forums.
Another user pointed at a similar topic with SteamOS. All the games are missing, but it's not just a case of a wrong path. The folder itself, where all the titles were stored, was now empty. It remains to be seen if this is a bigger problem or something that affects just a few unlucky gamers.