Hello @7thfleet, it's fair that Steam is not making the game available with an invalid config. I take it you also have Enable Steam Play for all other titles checkbox enabled, so Steam uses the global setting once the game-specific setting is removed.
The Steam client behavior in this scenario is already being tracked at #6501. This is just another way to reproduce the scenario.
Closing in favor of the older issue report.
Nothing extracted yet.
Your system information
More system information
Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:
When a proton distribution is removed from the filesystem, any games that use it have their green "PLAY" button changed to a grayed out "INSTALL" button.
This button cannot be clicked, and the game otherwise appears as uninstalled and uninstallable.
This issue can be fixed by checking and un-checking the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool". Upon doing this, the grayed button will switch back to the green play button. Of note: Before removing the proton distribution, this checkbox was checked and the custom distribution was selected.
An error message that the requested tool could not be found would be great. I encountered this issue after I updated my system, which upgraded proton-ge. It wasn't obvious what the problem was, particular because the grayed out button said "INSTALL" instead of "PLAY".
Steps for reproducing this issue:
This might be related to #6874
Please let me know if there is anything you'd like me to do to help.