Steam does not recognize when Subnautica is no longer running, preventing updates or relaunching

LordCurlyton

After the update roughly a week ago I can only play one session of Subnautica at a time. Upon exiting, the game does not appear to sync with Steam even though checking the Task Manager shows the exe has closed and Steam still registers the game as running. This prevents any queued updates from downloading and if you try and run the game it comes up with the error message that Steam encountered a problem while trying to update the game (app still running). I have tried doing a clean uninstall/reinstall of Subnautica after verifying the integrity said nothing was wrong and that also did not fix the issue. The only option is to exit and restart Steam, which allows me to play a new session of Subnautica and update the game (rather important in the lead up to 1.0 now). I can't think of what might be interfering with things and its got me stumped.

jamintheinfinite_1

This is more of a steam issue than Subnautica issue. This happens to me with any steam game

garath

More than once, I've had issues where Steam didn't want to update one of my games. I searched the internet and found instructions that I've used to force update my games:

"In the steam client, right click on the game in your library list, select properties from the dropdown list, then in the Local files tab select Verify integrity of game cache."

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/846939071164073378/

LordCurlyton

Its not an issue with any other game of mine on Steam, and the point is that I can't even play the game after one session, the "update" its trying to do is merely what appears to be the online handshake sync that just about every Steam game does when you start and leave the game. For whatever reason Subnautica has stopped doing the ending sync. Also, as I've said, I can Verify the Integrity and it won't find anything wrong. If I haven't played Subnautica yet in my current Steam session it can and will update just fine.

0x6A7232

LordCurlyton wrote: »

Its not an issue with any other game of mine on Steam, and the point is that I can't even play the game after one session, the "update" its trying to do is merely what appears to be the online handshake sync that just about every Steam game does when you start and leave the game. For whatever reason Subnautica has stopped doing the ending sync. Also, as I've said, I can Verify the Integrity and it won't find anything wrong. If I haven't played Subnautica yet in my current Steam session it can and will update just fine.

When this happens, get Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer, and do a CTRL+F for Subnautica

Links:
Sysinternals Suite | Process Explorer only

LordCurlyton

As expected, that's a negative result. There was nothing found that matched Subnautica.

garath

The steps I gave will ALWAYS force an update of Steam games. The steps work quite well, and I have used them for several of the Steam games.

0x6A7232

You can always back up your SavedGames folder, nuke Subnautica, then re-verify (forcing a re-download of the entire game), then restore your saved games.

EDIT: For the record, I just helped someone who had an error with Build18, chkdsk reported no filesystem problems, Steam verified all files ok, uninstalled, reinstalled, no dice, and Process Explorer showed no open handles to the game. Also tried restarting the PC. So what fixed it?

Installing to a different Steam Library (as I recommended he install to his SSD on C: instead of his spinny disk on ). Which is just all around weird. He has other recent Unity games that have no problems at all.

So I guess you could try creating a new Steam Library and installing to there if your log shows file access problems.

LordCurlyton

garath wrote: »

The steps I gave will ALWAYS force an update of Steam games. The steps work quite well, and I have used them for several of the Steam games.

I don't think you're quite following. I'm not worried about updating the game; it will do so upon a Steam restart, its that I literally cannot play the game more than once per Steam session at the moment and the problem also happens to be interfering with the ability to download updates (Steam thinks game is running so no matter how hard you try it won't d/l an update). You aren't even allowed to verify the integrity after you play once as Steam once again kindly asks you to stop running the game.
In the end, I'm only mildly annoyed by this, as I can work around it, but I would like to fix it.

LordCurlyton

0x6A7232 wrote: »

You can always back up your SavedGames folder, nuke Subnautica, then re-verify (forcing a re-download of the entire game), then restore your saved games.

EDIT: For the record, I just helped someone who had an error with Build18, chkdsk reported no filesystem problems, Steam verified all files ok, uninstalled, reinstalled, no dice, and Process Explorer showed no open handles to the game. Also tried restarting the PC. So what fixed it?

Installing to a different Steam Library (as I recommended he install to his SSD on C: instead of his spinny disk on ). Which is just all around weird. He has other recent Unity games that have no problems at all.

So I guess you could try creating a new Steam Library and installing to there if your log shows file access problems.

Steam's native un/re of the game kept the saves perfectly fine so I'm wondering if there are bits of an older build leftover somewhere that might be interfering with things. I just had that sort of problem with the GOG Galaxy client as it turned out there was old parts from even the original beta hanging around and cleaning that up before reinstalling fixed things. Are there any older/unused folders that might no longer be getting used and could interfere with things for Subnautica?

0x6A7232

C:\ProgramData\Unknown Worlds
%UserProfile%\AppData\LocalLow\Unknown Worlds
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Subnautica

Only folders I'm aware of. You could also download Microsoft Sysinternals Suite and use Process Explorer, do a CTRL+F for Subnautica and see what's hanging on to it when it's closed. Or just download Process Explorer by itself.

LordCurlyton

Having come back after a couple days away I can report that manually deleting those folders and then replacing the save games after backing them up (thus allowing full deletion of anything leftover from the uninstall), the problem appears to be gone even after testing a replaced save. I did notice that there were a couple older folders that were not removed by the uninstall (date last modified June 2017) which also weren't empty, so I presume it was some old gunk that wasn't cleaned up properly until now.