Steam says Destiny 2 can be removed, yet all its files remain in the same location.
Steam says Destiny 2 can be removed, yet all its files remain in the same location.
Your Steam library shows Destiny 2 as installable even though you haven’t played it in a while, and all assets point to it. It might be a DRM problem or a missing file telling Steam you own the game. Check your downloads folder for any recent files, verify the license status, and consider reinstalling Steam or updating your drivers.
Sure, it's good to know the installation checks for existing files. That should help avoid any false warnings.
As long as the files remain on the drive, you can start it. Just click install, and it will check the files. Likely the issue is that your PC disconnected the drive, causing Steam to show "drm hello your game is not installed mode." It’s also possible you needed to tell Steam which drive or folder the game is in, something that can happen occasionally. I move many games around for backup purposes.
This method functions only when Steam understands the installation locations. Also, making significant changes might cause a full re-download... so I keep backups of backups just in case... (phew, lmao).
This situation seems odd since I saved D2 to C: on my NVMe storage. Earlier that day I removed the SATA ports and connected them to my three hard drives because two were showing 100% usage in Task Manager with no data movement. None of those drives had D2 installed, so it's unclear what caused this.