Problem

steamdeps ~/.local/share/Steam/steamdeps.txt
Steam needs to install these additional packages: 
    libc6:i386, libgcc1:i386
[sudo] password for user:
libc6:i386 is already the newest version.
libgcc1:i386 is already the newest version.

The same message is written by

~/.local/share/Steam/bin_steamdeps.py ~/.local/share/Steam/steamdeps.txt

This output is written every time ~/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh is run.

The reason is that the desired state is not i (a circumstance that was not intentional and changed when realized)

dpkg -l|awk '{print $1," ",$2}'|grep 'libc6:i386\|libgcc1:i386'
pi   libc6:i386
pi   libgcc1:i386

Workaround

The desired state can be changed from p to i with

dpkg --get-selections|grep purge|sed s/purge/install/|sudo dpkg --set-selections

Patch

From ab0a1a81b8fd14a90083dd4f30a108a9c5dcaf7c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: John Peterson <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2013 01:47:31 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Ignoring desired state of dependency (because it's
 irrelevant)

---
 bin_steamdeps.py |    2 +-
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/bin_steamdeps.py b/bin_steamdeps.py
index 176d71c..e6f634a 100644
--- a/bin_steamdeps.py
+++ b/bin_steamdeps.py
@@ -266,7 +266,7 @@ def main( *args ):
        del os.environ[ "COLUMNS" ]

    process = subprocess.Popen( ['dpkg', '-l'] + list( packages.keys() ), stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE )
-   installed_pattern = re.compile( r"^ii\s+([^\s]+)\s+([^\s]+)" )
+   installed_pattern = re.compile( r"^\Si\s+([^\s]+)\s+([^\s]+)" )
    for line in process.stdout:
        line = line.decode( "utf-8" ).strip()
        match = re.match( installed_pattern, line )
-- 
1.7.9

System

lsb_release -a
Description:   Ubuntu 12.10