I just cleared out nearly 100 GB of data from about a dozen old games I Uninstalled years ago. WITCHER 2 and 3, DOS 2, Mass effect, xcom 1 and 2, Herizon 1… and more, all left up to 30 GB files after using game Uninstallers.
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SW Engineer here. No-one wants to pay for an uninstaller. They collected the money. Having a clean uninstaller does not bump up the stock price, nor does it increase new sales.
>I just cleared out nearly 100 GB of data from about a dozen old games I Uninstalled years ago. WITCHER 2 and 3, DOS 2, Mass effect, xcom 1 and 2, Herizon 1… and more, all left up to 30 GB files after using game Uninstallers.
Without any more information on what those remaining game files *were* this is going to be hard to answer.
The typical “Do not delete my profile data/safegames” option that your typical uninstaller will offer, for example, can absolutely make a difference of 30GB. A single lategame CK2 savegame will cost you about 50MB and it is not uncommon to amass hundreds of them.
There’s no reason to spend time and money developing a good uninstaller. The customer is literally removing your product, you don’t care about them anymore.
Could be worse. The original release of Temple of Elemental Evil would delete the entire drive partition if it was installed on any drive other than C:. One of the very first games to get patches after release.
Former Windows and game programmer here — it’s usually because at least on Windows, when one program tries to delete files made by another program, you can get all kinds of access denied and virus warnings (because those are things viruses like to do). Rather than figure out the right way or have to re-engineer the main program executable, it’s easier for programmers facing a tight shipping deadline to just say “forget it, not our problem.”
For what it’s worth, I remember putting time into the last uninstaller I dealt with to make sure it did clean up properly. And also ensured it presented a nice icon in Add/Remove Programs, and with an accurate Size too. No-one specifically asked for this, but it felt right to build it into the plan.
ELI5, what is a dp program?
Yeah, these days, I swear by a third-party solution that will scour your drive looking for leftover references after the official uninstaller runs. Revo Uninstaller works great for this. I have no clue exactly *how* it works, but it’s been reliably pretty great. I can’t attest if it ever misses anything, but it’s certainly never missed anything that I haven’t also then missed myself.
Windows does not provide an easy way to delete everything. It involves files in multiple places, likely registry entries and the like, and it is easy to overlook parts of it. Plus it isn’t a priority to develop. Also, uniquely to windows, a program cannot delete its own executable, despite fully being in RAM.
On systems like Linux and MacOS, it is much easier to fully remove a program.
I specifically have an Uninstaller program that removes programs quietly for me and additionally prompts me to remove all leftovers, including anything left in the registry. Backups are included and it’s all free btw.
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