OS X Steam won't recognise installed game

bmac89 said:

I probably should have responded to N19h7m4r3. I am understandably very frustrated that I am completely unable to use my Steam purchases and it isn't exactly helpful when someone appears to be suggesting you are ranting everytime something goes wrong and not trying or capable of working through the issues like them.

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No worries, mate and I wasn't committing in regards to you at all. It's mostly to two other members here that seem to fervently go after anyone that seems to be okay with Steam or any other client, along with the client themselves. Easily seen by some threads that crop up here lately.

In fact, it makes me rarely want to frequent the forums section despite being on extremely good terms with the majority, and developers.

Sadly in your case I've never heard of anyone with such an issue relating to Steam, and can only tell you to do the basics which I assume you already did.

• 
  Tried closing it, reopening.
  
  Moving the game's folders out, rebooting, and moving back in, then starting Steam.
  
  Making sure the client is up to date, same for OS.
  
  Making a new User account to see if the issue persists there. If it does not, it most likely means an issue with your regular account.
  
  Cleaning them out, and reinstalling.

In relation to not being able to log into the support page for Steam, they use a different user account for Support compared to your regular Steam account. You'll most likely need to make a new one there.

N19h7m4r3 said:

No worries, mate and I wasn't committing in regards to you at all. It's mostly to two other members here that seem to fervently go after anyone that seems to be okay with Steam or any other client, along with the client themselves. Easily seen by some threads that crop up here lately.

In fact, it makes me rarely want to frequent the forums section despite being on extremely good terms with the majority, and developers.

Sadly in your case I've never heard of anyone with such an issue relating to Steam, and can only tell you to do the basics which I assume you already did.

• 
  Tried closing it, reopening.
  
  Moving the game's folders out, rebooting, and moving back in, then starting Steam.
  
  Making sure the client is up to date, same for OS.
  
  Making a new User account to see if the issue persists there. If it does not, it most likely means an issue with your regular account.
  
  Cleaning them out, and reinstalling.

In relation to not being able to log into the support page for Steam, they use a different user account for Support compared to your regular Steam account. You'll most likely need to make a new one there.

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We've seen this on ONE of the test machines at Feral, it seems to perhaps be related to having multiple users or shared libraries enabled and a permissions issue causing a list of installed items to disappear. Definitely an edge case but infuriating when it happens as all the more obvious reinstall tricks didn't work.

If we find out how it happens and how to fix it I'll post in the thread (and log the details with Valve).

Edwin

edddeduck said:

We've seen this on ONE of the test machines at Feral, it seems to perhaps be related to having multiple users or shared libraries enabled and a permissions issue causing a list of installed items to disappear. Definitely an edge case but infuriating when it happens as all the more obvious reinstall tricks didn't work.

If we find out how it happens and how to fix it I'll post in the thread (and log the details with Valve).

Edwin

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Interesting, does having a single User, or making a new user account and installing steam and the games there solve the issue?

Please can we play nice and get back on topic? Based off our test lab experiences which has almost every modern Mac of the last 5 years we have seen thing happen once. Checking we also had one Steam user report an issue with a Feral game that looks like this issue.

So it's a genuine but but looking fairly rare, it appears to be related to a file not being updated likely due to permissions as reinstalling the app doesn't fix it (pointing to a preference file somewhere).

Steam does have it's problems but I think the truth is in the middle, the vast majority of people have a great experience but you can also get a corrupt Steam client through no fault of your own if you happen to trigger something.

I'd suggest running fseventer (a debugging tool) and see what files Steam is touching when running, likely one of the preferences is the root cause of things but updating and deleting ALL of your preferences and your Steam install (you might not need to delete your actual library) might fix it.

If we can build up some information on when it happens, what people are doing and how to fix it it means we can also get the issue fixed.

If a solution is found outside of this thread I'll post the instructions here, if the instructions are found here I'll pass the details onto the guys at Steam. They have fixed many Mac bugs over the years and if you give them some 100% reproduction steps they tend to fix them pretty quickly.

So lets all try and get along and focus on a solution to the problem instead of dictionary definitions and peoples personal hatred or love of various systems.

This thread is about helping someone with a problem so lets try and help them!

Edwin

OP, do you happen to have a USB installer for your particular version of OS X? If so, please try the following and see if it doesn't work for you:

1) Boot off your USB installer if you have one. If not, boot into your Mac's recovery partition. Run Disk Utility.
2) Verify your startup disk. Repair as needed.
3) Verify permissions. Repair as needed.
4) Exit Disk Utility and select reboot from the menu. Hold left shift at the gray startup screen before the Apple logo appears so that the system will start booting in safe mode. You will know this worked because a progress bar will appear under the logo.
5) Log into your admin account when login screen appears. Do nothing.
6) Restart OS X as normal.
7) Go into system preferences, security & privacy, accessibility. Uncheck Steam from the list if it's there.
8) Follow the instructions outlined in my opening post in this thread to remove/replace Steam in this preference pane.

This all seems like a longshot, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

Sorry if I missed something, didn't read through the whole thread.

All I can say is to get in touch with Steam support.

I once had an issue and they helped me solve it in no time. Very competent team.

Looks like Valve fixed the bug, just update your client.

A minor update has been released for the Steam Client and will be automatically downloaded. This includes all changes previously released on November 12; for a full list, see the original update notes.

UPDATE: This client was re-released on Nov 25 for Mac OS X to fix a major issue with game libraries appearing to be empty.

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edddeduck said:

Looks like Valve fixed the bug, just update your client.

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I just did an update and it stated released November 19th as the latest release and steam tells me it is now up to date, all seems OK now.

bmac89 said:

The latest update on 27th has fixed the issues including game library missing, steam client freezing on launch, damaged content error, universal access & firewall requests and offline mode now appears to work too.

The issue with Steam Support login and email verification has now been resolved also - however hopefully I won't need to use support.

Thanks for your help.

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Glad you're playing again