protonscr

Game backups are 0 bytes

steamopen Steam clientDistro Family: Ubuntu
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10951 · opened 2024-06-04 by jveitchmichaelis · updated 2026-08-11 · 7 comments · github
Jjveitchmichaelis 2024-06-04 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1716584667 (Stable)
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Kubuntu 23.04
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
  • Steam Logs: Would prefer to not post publicly due to the amount of information in there.
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX3090

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

When trying to back up a game to disk, nothing is stored and the backup size is 0 bytes.

image

There are no log messages if Steam is run from a terminal. I've tried with disks formatted exfat, ext4, etc. all have sufficient storage space for the game (and either way there is no error message about the disk being full or incorrectly formatted).

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Attempt to back up an intstalled game to an external drive
Jjoseph9991 2024-08-23 github

Is there any update on this issue? Facing the same on Fedora 40

Ssodarus 2024-09-07 github

I have the same issue when trying to backup to remote cifs mounted folder. Distro Kubuntu 24.04. Backing up to local folder works fine.
Screenshot_20240907_161303

Mmrunix00 2024-11-10 github

Same issue

Mmrunix00 2024-11-11 github

It turns out the issue was caused by flatpak's sandboxing, the solution is to install Flatseal, then add rw permissions to the directory that you want to save your backups to

Jjoseph9991 2024-11-11 github

It turns out the issue was caused by flatpak's sandboxing, the solution is to install Flatseal, then add rw permissions to the directory that you want to save your backups to

Another solution was to add a link to the destination through flatpak. I saw it on Reddit but it'll take me sometime to find that post. The problem is that you only add a link to the default installation location and not the other directories.

Once added, the backups are possible.

EElementW 2025-01-21 github

Running Steam natively (no flatpak sandboxing) this issue happens to me as well.
What's interesting though is that backing up a game (preferably small, tried Patrick's Parabox) to a destination like /tmp makes the backup function work afterwards.

GGruphius 2026-08-11 github

I encounter the same issue on Windows 11 with some games, so it's not Linux exclusive. If I try to backup a whole bunch of games at once Steam also stops backing up games entirely when one has a backup size of 0 bytes. It doesn't even back up any following games.

Edit: Update after trying a few things: The backup always fails, if the game was modified in any way or if a file got corrupted. Instead of giving me an error and tell me, that something isn't right, it just does literally nothing. Repairing the game file fixes this.

Nothing extracted yet.