Installation and Un-installation

This is mandatory in order for any application to work under a non-administrator account. Something running as a user cannot write arbitrarily wherever it wants; in user mode, apps can only write to the user folders without explicit privilege escalation. These files are typically generated during use and not as part of the installation.

I can accept that, but I assume you know this already so why not tell the user that folders and files will be created there after installation or during gameplay?

Could CCleaner help with that?

Shouldn't have to use a third party program to remove stuff from another party if that party provided an uninstaller.

1. Because 99% of users don't care, won't read it, or won't understand what they're reading. If they can save and load games successfully, they're happy.

2. Stuff is put there because people usually want to back up their save games, settings, and such. When they're in your documents folder (or the games subfolder of it), that happens automatically when you back up your documents.

This is actually in the Windows software design guidelines. User data files like those go in the users document folders, to keep them split from other users on the computer (why is Bob able to muck up my save games?), to keep them organized, and as kryo mentioned so that users can use the software without needing local admin rights. (Updating the program files folder requires admin rights.)

Don't worry though, they renamed it from "My Documents" to "Documents" in Windows 7.

You have point, but if nothing else works and this will, than why not? For me at least - I have it anyway.

I don't mind to have "other" files somewhere, outside of their main folder, but I'd prefer to have them in one folder, for example "My games" inside Documents, not spreaded around like BBs from torn bag on concrete floor.

Some games are sloppy, yeah.

But other times, stuff has to go where it does. System libraries have to go where Microsoft says they do, period. Third party libraries can be all over the map in where they go, depending on what the vendor did. Often times files go places and there isn't anything the game developer can do about it. You can't remove it unless you know for sure that nothing else is using it, because that would break the other program, and a Steam uninstaller has no straightforward way to know that.

(Can you tell what my day job is yet? )

It's no excuse for them - we've been taught to clean up after ourselves, they should do that too! (speak with R. Lee Ermey voice)

CCleaner knows, other don't? Hmm...

LEad programmer?

CCleaner is spending a lot of time analyzing stuff to try and figure it out, and it's had cases in the past of getting it wrong and breaking things. A normal game uninstaller is not getting the resources into development to do that kind of analysis, and you really don't want it making mistakes.

But for a specific game/program, the programmers of that game/program know what goes where. They know if the game puts something in Documents & Settings, and they know where exactly. So for them, it would be no problem to make the uninstaller also remove that.

Uninstallers don't remove user files, as a rule. Some of them used to ask if you wanted it to as an option, but that is never the default.

That's a recipe for support headaches and complaints when someone needs to reinstall a game to fix something and they find out the uninstaller wiped out all their saves & screenshots.

I mean, Office knows it's putting files there too, but should uninstalling Word really delete all your documents?

CCleaner is one and only (sort of) so these actions are more or less tolerable.

I forgot when was the previous time I saw message offering me to remove my saved files.

What irritates me the most, is widespread of save files. Steam's game's folder, appdata, documents, documents/my games, program files (wave far cry 3 and saves kept in ubisoft launcher folder)...

Me too. Part of that is actually Microsoft's fault, because they keep changing their guidance on where it should go. Vista & 7 have a "Saved Games" folder inside your user folder, but before that it was My Documents\My Games, before that it was \My Documents, and for some games they just used their own folder instead (which is now the steam folder).

The really annoying thing is that when they created "Saved Games", they didn't do the sensible thing and symlink My Documents\My Games to it (or vice versa), so at least those two locations would actually be a single location. No, they just gave us another place, although nobody seems to use it outside Microsoft published games.

Maybe that's why Gabe formed Valve in the form it is now - to sleep on the bed, eat from the plate, not to sleep on the ceiling and eat from vacuum cleaner, because someone decided it will be kewl.

Never bothers me, except those times i had a hard time finding the saved game folder!

That means "always till I find that sneaky bastard"?

I was kind of formulating my own response to this thread when I came upon this nugget of a post. Pretty much says it all perfectly! Well done Sir/Madam!

For #1

Using My Documents for all USER files is now STANDARD. Your save games and user files belong in My Documents. This is especially important sine all WIndows migration tools EXPECT user files to be in My Documents only. Your saves and config files need to be there. Microsoft has created My Games whichi s a standard sub-folder for game makers to put game type files in.

Note this is aa VAST improvement over trying to figure out how each game may or may not be storing save games and such. For example, do you know which games save your persistent character state in %APPDATA%? Do you even know where that IS? You will when you format your compuer and lose 100 hours of save game progress in Binding of Issac or Payday2.

Having save and config files in My Documents is far far better option than the old wild west stupidity.

#2

Uninstallation is very very very tricky. Think it's simple? Well no one wants to be "Myth2 Uninstaller Part Deux" which was extremely thorough in the Uninstall. So thorough it uninstalled c:\windows!!!!!

The issues with 'files still hanging around generally falls from'

1) The uninstaller generally only unintalls known files and is very very wary of deleting sub-directories if ANYTHIGN is stil in them

2) Uninstallers do not do rm-rf* type of behavior especially becaus this is dangerous

3) MSI type of installer rely on a database, but unless the dev is really really on top  of their MSP patching stuff gets missed

4) uninstallers dont generally retry to delete files that are locked or cannot be removed for other reason