--- title: The Steam Bug That Deleted Your Entire Home Directory description: In 2015, a bug in Steam's installation script caused it to recursively delete a user's entire home directory and connected drives. The culprit was an `rm -rf... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Steam Bug That Deleted Your Entire Home Directory | daily.dev og:description: In 2015, a bug in Steam's installation script caused it to recursively delete a user's entire home directory and connected drives. The culprit was an `rm -rf... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/JvtbNDZcv.png og:image:alt: The Steam Bug That Deleted Your Entire Home Directory og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Steam Bug That Deleted Your Entire Home Directory **[Coding with Lewis](https://daily.dev/sources/codingwithlewis)** · 1 min read · 30 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary In 2015, a bug in Steam's installation script caused it to recursively delete a user's entire home directory and connected drives. The culprit was an `rm -rf $STEAMROOT` command that defaulted to `rm -rf /` when the STEAMROOT variable was empty — effectively wiping everything from the root directory. The bug was triggered when a user moved their Steam folder and symlinked it back, causing Steam to attempt a reinstall. It was eventually fixed with a simple code change, but the incident serves as a cautionary tale about dangerous shell scripting patterns in widely-used software. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why did Steam on Linux delete a user's entire home directory back in 2015? Steam's uninstall logic ran the command 'rm -rf steamroot' to clear its installation folder, but when the steam root variable was empty, the command silently fell back to 'rm -rf /', recursively deleting every file the user owned starting from the root directory. This happened to a user named Caven after he moved his Steam folder to another drive and symlinked it back, causing Steam to think it needed to reinstall. It wiped his files plus a 3TB external backup drive before Valve patched it with a one-line fix. _Shell script bugs like this show why developers double-check every rm -rf path variable before shipping._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@starfallcodes** · 4 upvotes > safe code they said. My drive won't be lobotomised they said. **@codechini** · 1 upvotes > What can, go wrong will, go wrong. **@sam7work** · 1 upvotes > what people don't fully understand, it that all the testing, reviewing and linting is still a best effort case, something can still get through , unforeseen combination of events can cause the software to behave in unforeseen ways , even causing havoc , this is a 2015 event , and yes, those are prehistoric times , but these silly bugs do exist , and will likely remain in existence for a very long time to come ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Coding Agent Horror Stories: The rm -rf ~/ Incident](https://daily.dev/posts/coding-agent-horror-stories-the-rm--rf-incident-azeyqv2zz) · Docker · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [Suicide Linux @ Things Of Interest](https://daily.dev/posts/suicide-linux-things-of-interest-diizyxulk) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#shell](https://daily.dev/tags/shell), [#steam](https://daily.dev/tags/steam) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Steam Bug That Deleted Your Entire Home Directory","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv"},"datePublished":"2026-07-08T16:36:01.199Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T19:14:01.966Z","description":"In 2015, a bug in Steam's installation script caused it to recursively delete a user's entire home directory and connected drives. 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My drive won’t be lobotomised they said.","datePublished":"2026-07-09T07:57:15.819Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/JvtbNDZcv#c-p0VXofD9J","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Starfall :D","url":"https://daily.dev/starfallcodes","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--4xoTqFbk--/f_auto/v1786806197/avatars/avatar_ecPDW57nUVRidLxwsxruz?_a=BAMAMicg0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"What can, go wrong will, go wrong.","datePublished":"2026-07-10T03:34:59.198Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/JvtbNDZcv#c-a8cmrjndk","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Chinmay","url":"https://daily.dev/codechini","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocIH2WsF8sgGFUn2cqwWEP7lShdb0sJtMm77hIQNvoUXN83IWMIo=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"what people don’t fully understand, it that all the testing, reviewing and linting is still a best effort case, something can still get through , unforeseen combination of events can cause the software to behave in unforeseen ways , even causing havoc , this is a 2015 event , and yes, those are prehistoric times , but these silly bugs do exist , and will likely remain in existence for a very long time to come","datePublished":"2026-07-09T14:39:57.784Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/JvtbNDZcv#c-I2ibcFNTA","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Sam","url":"https://daily.dev/sam7work","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocJGz1oRsDNA5jHaL8S_Dm_S69r5oVuMT_253w26IC3wacnjq1U=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-steam-bug-that-deleted-your-entire-home-directory-jvtbndzcv#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why did Steam on Linux delete a user's entire home directory back in 2015?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Steam's uninstall logic ran the command 'rm -rf steamroot' to clear its installation folder, but when the steam root variable was empty, the command silently fell back to 'rm -rf /', recursively deleting every file the user owned starting from the root directory. This happened to a user named Caven after he moved his Steam folder to another drive and symlinked it back, causing Steam to think it needed to reinstall. It wiped his files plus a 3TB external backup drive before Valve patched it with a one-line fix. Shell script bugs like this show why developers double-check every rm -rf path variable before shipping."}}]} ```