PSA: Moving your Steam install directory on Linux can cause all files to be deleted

Steam users that run on GNU/Linux are reporting that moving the Steam folder to a new location is resulting in the deletion of everything owned by the user.

Moving the Steam folder is not allowed during the GNU/Linux Steam installation, so, this move is something that is being done post-download.

The initial reveal of this bug was reported (very calmly for someone who lost everything) by Github user keyvin. The user 'moved the folder in the title to a drive mounted under /media/user/BLAH and symlinked /home/user/.local/steam to the new location' and after a failed attempt or two to start Steam after the file move, everything owned by the user was deleted including the content on his 3TB external hard drive.

Two other users followed keyvin's post with their own horror stories. User d00fy lost his entire Home directory on Steam after starting steam.sh with STEAM_DEBUG=1. Onodera-punpun, another Github user, also lost their Home directory to the steam.sh script.

The issue has been isolated and patches for a fix are in discussion, until then – be careful with your tampering.

[Github via Neowin]