If I had a wish for christmas from GabeN or Valve in general, it would be actually meaningful error messages from steam.
If I had two wishes, I would like a community tool to share configs to make games work that require tweaking.
But I’d be very happy if I got better error messages.
Steam on Linux only for the last 10 years. I don’t recall ever seeing a disk write error.
Makes one wonder.
Now that I think about it, that is across two desktops, two laptops, and more recently two steam decks and a steam machine. They all have one thing in common besides steam.
I dont think I’ve ever seen a steam error, neither on all my time on linux, nor on windows before it.
Certainly wasnt problem free, but typically never came with errors.
In my situation, I had a minute of power outage while downloading, which got me this error. I had to run check disk.
I think my coworkers are in this thread, they give the same terrible excuses and are bad at coding.
Still holding on for HL3 before I die.
Just wanted to point out that this search is for over a decade of questions. It might be a problem, but over 10 years you are likely to get a sizeable result for a lot of errors.
That is true, but it also shows that this issue has gone on for over a decade and not been solved.
I think it’s quite a leap in logic to assume that this is all one singular problem, rather than a collection of a decades-worth of issues that happen to give a disk write error. It’s a pretty generalized error message, and there could be countless different causes.
this issue has gone on for over a decade and not been solved.
Gaben should have made ssds eternal by now
One of the “disk write error” I encountered, is the absence of symbolic link in a file system.
I pluged a used TF card (formatted as exFAT) into my Steam Deck. It works most of the time, but one day I installed a game packed by AppImage, and Steam reported “disk write error”. Turned out exFAT doesn’t support symbolic links, and AppImage uses symbolic links to resolve DLL dependencies.
How is “disk write error” not a meaningful message? It means there was an error writing data to the disk.
Because there’s no error code attached or any details about what specific error it was, what file it happened on, what mount it happened on, etc…
So what the issue with my car?
Well it doesn’t start upNot bashing on Steam, to be clear, but this error will not help fix the issue, user actually needs to investigate one of the many reasons this could be.
A meaningful error may be: write failed because files are locked by process xy.
I dont think Windows gives that information to Steam.
Just reboot and try again. It fixes it 90% of the time.
Disk Write Error is very much more likely to be a Windows (+/- Linux) error rather than a Steam error. If Steam can’t write to the disk for any reason, all it can say is there is a disk write error. It’s unlikely to know whether that’s due to the hard-drive failing or the hard drive going offline for some reason or even just a permissions error.
I’m not surprised there are 2000 pages, because hard drive write failures are very common, and as the OS has responsibility for that, then the information available to steam is going to be limited.
In fairness Steam and many games do provide quite detailed logs. But they can only really log things they can control. If they get a message from the OS (like “disk write error”), all they can do is log that. It just doesn’t necessarily even have the permissions or access to that level of the OS to provide the “why”, just that essentially “computer said no”.
Yes OS errors can be vague, but no, you’re not going to just get “disk error error” for such disparate errors.
Do a search for “errno”, and specifically the POSIX error section. There are separate errors for “permission denied”, “device unavailable”, “bad file descriptor”, etc. Windows API calls have a whole host of their own error codes, plus functions to examine what’s going wrong specifically.
This is most likely caused by a higher layer in the code catching errors when it doesn’t know what to do with them, and then just showing a generic message.
So all of that is probably technically true.
If Steam can’t write to the disk for any reason, all it can say is there is a disk write error.
But it’s [current year]. I’m sure we as mankind and GabeN in particular could figure something out to make meaningful error messages from the OS through steam, to the user a reality.
Everything my computer does or any other machine, should align with me so I can use it. That’s the point. I want human readable error messages. I want buttons that are big enough for me to touch and I want an instruction manual in a language I can read. Or a good picture based one.
For example. It could be that there is not enough disk space. It could be a permission issue and it could be some hardware failure. Either of those would help me.
That’s true, but it could still be more specific.
For example there’s a comment about symlinks on exFAT. Steam could say “failed to create symbolic link” instead of “disk write error” in that case.
There typically are a few different error conditions for normal writes too that Steam could pass on. E.g. on Linux there are separate errors for out of quota, files becoming too large for the fs they’re on, the fs being out of space, and low-level I/O errors.
When I had those it turned out I had bad RAM
How did you arrive at that count?
Because the link is just a Steam forum search result for “disk write error”. There are over 2000 pages of results. OP doesn’t have a story.
Click the link. Its the number of pages for the search result in Steam forums.
Thanks. I didn’t notice that there was a link.
OP didn’t surround the phrase with quotes (and I don’t know if Steam’s search knows what to do with quoted phrases anyway). So most of those pages will be full of posts that contain those words but not that phrase.
Over 6300 pages when you search for “woke”. And talk on the Steam forums using that word has made the forums unusable. Also talk about Steam charts for games where it doesn’t matter, but I’d blame live service developers for that more than Valve.
Between the anti-woke conspiracism and the outright racism, transphobia and general bigotry, I don’t know how anyone can use those forums for anything. Genuinely the most toxic and hate-filled forums I’ve ever used in my 30-odd years of internetting.
It’s embarrassing to be a gamer these days
I look up game info on the steam forums several times a week, and I have found them significantly less contentious than lemmy. I don’t remember ever seeing a “woke” thread. I assume it’s because it’s largely contained to AAA games and I’m usually playing indie games?
In any case I think it’s an exaggeration to call them “unusable”.
I don’t remember ever seeing a “woke” thread. I assume it’s because it’s largely contained to AAA games and I’m usually playing indie games?
I’ve seen it in every single indie game I’ve played that even has a whiff of lgbtq+ tolerance. And even then, it’s often completely imagined.
Example from literally yesterday: that new Kings Field-like called Queen’s Domain has at least one active thread about the gender of the MC even though it’s first person (and like PS1 graphics). They are concerned that it might be a girly-looking man. I’m not kidding.
Another one from a week or two ago is from a new traditional roguelike called Roguefort (awesome game, btw. It’s like Caves of Qud, but with cheese-based magic).
When the game was released, I believe within a day, there were posts whining about pronouns. The characters in the game are literally like 10 pixels high, so it’s very useful information to know an NPC’s gender when speaking to them.
But apparently enough people made a stink about it that the dev, in a moment of weakness, removed them.
To his credit, he put them back in almost immediately after some backlash and affirmed his support of trans people, and I tend to believe him he seems genuine.
This is a scourge on Steam. I fucking hate being a gamer in 2026. I hate the connotation it now has.
It ain’t a conspiracy… Bigots genuinely just don’t like what they perceive as woke. It is legitimately that shallow. There’s no new ones there’s no gotcha there’s no conspiracy. It’s just a bunch of assholes being assholes.
It’s not a conspiracy, they really don’t like woke, see new Gears of War, Dragon Age, Concord, there’s no secret plot
You know woke is a good thing right? It has only been “weaponised” by bigots.
Irrelevant, the target audience doesn’t like it, and that’s who they must sell games to.
This user is a conservative and a transphobe. I tagged them as such months ago
You’re the most cisphobic and independophobic person on Lemmy.
Your tags are a badge of honor, if you agreed with me I’d be very sad and quite humiliated. I’d probably weep in shame
This comment means a lot. I’m glad a transphobe hates me
Wait you can tag people on Lemmy? Is it like RES, or a built-in feature?
Several clients have the feature. Not sure if it’s supported by the Lemmy API itself or not but I know Boost, Voyager, and a few others have it.
If customers actually had a problem with however these morons define “woke”, The Odyssey, Barbie, and Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t have made billions of dollars. And if you want to look to boogeymen for those three games failing (the first one is even subjective), it’s Game Pass, retrofitting a project into different designs twice, and being extremely late to the live service party.
If I had two wishes, I would like a community tool to share configs to make games work that require tweaking.
So something like Protondb but that actually assembles or merges config files? Sounds interesting.
I mean, what more do you want from the error? Time? Location? Directory that failed the write? Sector count? It’s pretty straightforward.
Every error steam has given me was easily figured out in the logs. Just like every program.
Yes? The error should at least show basic info. Requiring checking the logs when the error message could just show some info is silly and clearly doesn’t work well given how many people are asking for help with it.
Every error steam has given me was easily figured out in the logs.
Wouldn’t it be better if the error message itself helped you figure it out, so that you don’t have to look into logs? People seriously underestimate useful information in a good error message. Stuff like “Windows encountered an unexpected error” are just not useful.
It’s pretty straightforward.
logs
Just like every program.
If it has over two thousand pages of problem reports, users asking for help, it is a legitimate problem and the logs are not a sufficient help to those users.
What you’re not understanding is how hard it is for an operating system to diagnose a problem with a drive.
You’re expecting from Stream they write a full diagnostics tool so the program can figure out what went wrong, which could range from permission issues or formatting, to failing sectors/drives.
In theory you could make something that works, in reality you’ll be getting false positives, for example: a permission error message while it’s actually a physical write error. The ‘wrong’ message is worse than a ‘vague’ message.
If I can look up what the error was with the disk access, in a log, then steam can do that too. It can parse that, and present it to me. That’s what I expect.
And if that fails, it can at least point me to the correct log.
I can not stress enough that the client tells me nothing:
- it doesn’t tell me that there are logs
- it doesn’t link documentation on how to read them.
- it doesn’t tell me where I can look for it.
The only approach I have to solve is, is to use a search engine for “steam disk write error”. That’s it.
Disk write error.
Almost like the error has something to do with writing to the disk.
As in the disk may have an error in which Steam cannot write to it.
What else is Steam supposed to say? it’s literally pointing to the error, it can’t do anything else. If you don’t know how to pour through logs or anything that’s okay, that’s what Geek Squad is for
Disk write error.
Almost like the error has something to do with writing to the disk.
It should provide more information, as to “which file”, “which drive”, and what caused the error like “not enough space” or “no rights to write” or whatever the hell it is. And maybe some other context depending on the circumstances. “Disk write error” is just too generic. It’s better than nothing, but the request and critique in this post is that it could and should be more detailed and helpful.
In theory, I’m inclined to agree with you. But error handling in your code is not at all straightforward. Just successfully catching an error so the program can exit gracefully can be difficult. Classifying different error conditions and displaying an appropriate message is even worse.
Basically, the logs exist for exactly this purpose. Just how it works.
Basically, the logs exist for exactly this purpose. Just how it works.
it is wild for someone to say this immediately after saying “actually they can’t display the error because it’s too hard” and somehow not realize in the middle of typing how ridiculous it is trying to square those two claims.
additionally, every logging library worth using lets you log to multiple outputs, e.g. disk and screen.
Yes, and will outputting the log directly to screen help to make the error any less confiding?
And writing code that includes robust error catching and handling is simple, then?
No one asks to output the naked log line. There are a few more information that could be presented in a more readable and useful manner in a message box. Error messages are meant to be helpful, not to annoy without knowing what happened.
Even if you are right and the log contains the answer, why not trying to make more helpful Error messages? Does it hurt you?
If they can log it, then they can show it in the message.
How often do you read log files…?
Like, windows specifically stopped including the stack trace in the blue screen of death because of how rarely that proved to be necessary. And most log files are about as easy to parse, so…
Doesn’t matter. There is zero excuse for bad error messages.
it does. in the logs.
The error message should contain all the additions information, so that we don’t even need to parse and look into log files. There is no excuse for bad error messages.
