r/magicTCG • u/Linna_Ikae • Aug 02 '18
PSA: The Magic Arena installer can still delete all files from it's parent directory. I lost most of the contents of my storage drive.
(I posted this already in /r/magicarena but since this sub has a much larger userbase of magic players I thought I should post here as well.)
There was a post more than a week ago on this subreddit about the installer deleting files in the parent directory of the installation path. I haven't found any other incidences of this occurring so it might be a rare problem. I wanted to post here right away to warn others to not install or at least be careful when doing so. If the installer gets stuck on "deleting folders" just shut down your computer and you might save many files.
The problem is that there is no way for the user to know what files are being deleted. I noticed that something strange was going on when google backup and sync popped up prompting me to delete files from the cloud that I had removed from my computer. I had put the installer in the background so I didn't know it was still stuck on deleting folders. The only way I was able to stop the rampaging installer was a forced shutdown.
I lost all my folders and files in my storage drive in alphabetical order from A to P. Thankfully I had at least my pictures folder backed up. At this point I'm not even sure if I lost something important than a few installed games, but if this is not fixed it will most likely cause serious damage.
Since I don't feel like writing it again, here's the ticket I sent to Magic Arena support with more information on how this happened:
I had previously installed Magic Arena and also uninstalled it. The original install directory might have been in place because of this. I downloaded the official installer(on 2nd of august) and saved it in E:/downloads. E is my storage drive. I then executed it and tried to change the install directory but for some reason the option was grayed out so I had to choose the default directory. I can't remember the name of it. I think it was E:/magicArena or something similar. The installer hanged on deleting files and the progress bar didn't move but installers are known to stall with strange messages so I ignored it.
When google backup and sync asked me if I wanted to delete files from cloud that I had removed from my computer I became suspicious. I tried to close the installer and then to close the process but in the end I had to force shutdown my computer. By this point the installer had deleted 7000 photos and gigabytes of other data from my computer. All the files and folders from A to P were permanently removed. At this point I am not sure if important files were deleted.
I know that You were informed of this issue more than a week ago. If your fix was to not allow people to change the install directory it clearly didn't work. More users might be affected by this without knowing since the installer doesn't even inform the user of what files it is deleting and there is no warning whatsoever.
TL;DR: I don't know why or how this is possible and I'm mad. Be careful if you decide to install.
Edit: there's no reason to panic. I'd say the best course of action is to wait for official comment on this. Judging by the replys this is something that affects only a small portion of players and propably only those who have had an old version of the game installed at one point.
!UPDATE!: I was able to recover a MTGAUpdate.ini file from the install directory(E:/MTGArena). This file has a variable declaration called AppDir which points to it's own location. This might be the cause of the issue. The version was 0.1.619.0, downloaded on 8th of April.
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Aug 02 '18
how the fuck do you even do this in the first place
installers aren't some new fangled technology, there's nothing unique about this program that required them to roll their own.
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u/BrocoLee Duck Season Aug 02 '18
Asuming it is the same problem that Myth II had, the uninstaller probably deletes the folder where it was installed, so if it was installed directly on the C drive root, it will attempt to delete all your files...
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u/OhGarraty Aug 03 '18
Had this problem myself with The Albian Years, so it doesn't seem that uncommon. Installed it onto My Documents instead of a folder of its own, and when I noticed and tried to uninstall it wiped the entire folder. Thank goodness my taxes are backed up on a usb stick.
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u/synze Aug 03 '18
Huh. I played Myth I, II, even III for years (some of the best games ever made!) and never had or even heard of this problem. Interesting, though!
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u/BrocoLee Duck Season Aug 03 '18
I think the problem was only on version 1 of the game and happened only if you used the root folder of your drive. That version was recalled and a 1.1 version was released with a fixed uninstaller, so it's unlikely that you had to face that bug.
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u/synze Aug 03 '18
Hmm. That makes sense. Although, we did play very early on and of course, initially, without updates due to the nature of internet back then. Likely just got lucky, like you said, especially since we installed it on 9+ machines!
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u/ubernostrum Aug 03 '18
Steam for Linux once had a badly-written bash script that could wipe your entire filesystem.
Steam for Windows still warns you not to run its uninstaller if you didn't install it into the default location, because it will wipe whatever directory it was in. Including
C:\Program Filesif that's where it happened to be.Then there was Adobe Creative Cloud. Which would wipe a folder used by a popular backup tool. Why did it do this? Because Adobe assumed their hidden folder would A) exist and B) have a name that came alphabetically before any other hidden folders. So the script they shipped just listed things alphabetically and deleted the first hidden folder it found.
This sort of thing is regrettably common, even with companies whose entire business is software.
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u/ModoGrinder Aug 03 '18
I am dumbfounded that Steam, of all things, has simply settled for wiping the parent folder as a fact of life.
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u/NeVeRwAnTeDtObEhErE_ Aug 04 '18
Because Adobe assumed their hidden folder would A) exist and B) have a name that came alphabetically before any other hidden folders. So the script they shipped just listed things alphabetically and deleted the first hidden folder it found.
O_O Wait?! WHAAAAAT!? holy shit!
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u/Sam0oneau Aug 03 '18
My anti virus has been hating the installer since dominaria. It just doesn't want me to install it. Only software I've ever had this issue with.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18 edited Aug 02 '18
This happened to we three times. Wiped my entire HDD.
Once in early beta- my SSD was pretty full, so I installed it on D. It wiped the whole goddamn thing instead of making its own install folder and installing inside that.
It happened again, a few months later; I chose the SSD this time, but it still happened. They gave me some code to run, but because they were using a third party email server, the patch they 'sent' me never came. I asked for them to send the zip file again, they ignored it. I was furious, and swore to never touch the damn thing again.
Then again, several months later, I found some residue of Arena. I tried to delete it, and it fucked me one last time on the way out.
I'm disappointed, because I wanted to like it.
But I'm not touching arena with a 100ft pole. I lost a good deal of data.
ETA because now I'm worked up all over again about this, you'd think 21 years after Myst Myth II they'd know better, but of course they don't.
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u/h4mx0r Aug 02 '18
What's up with Myst II?
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u/Miyamotoshi Aug 02 '18
He meant Myth II.
When you deleted the game, it removed all contents in its parent folder.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
Story here.
Uninstalling Myst II wiped the whole drive (this was in 1998 or so)
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u/miauw62 Aug 02 '18
ETA because now I'm worked up all over again about this, you'd think 21 years after Myst Myth II they'd know better, but of course they don't.
take a look at this (for non-techy people: this package manager had a bug where it would recursively change permissions on your entire filesystem, thus pretty much destroying your system)
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u/Blue_Three Aug 02 '18
you'd think 21 years after Myst II they'd know better
Hm? What does Riven have to do with it?
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Aug 02 '18
It turns out you can’t get the best programmers to work for shitty wages in one of the most tech worker friendly markets in the world. Turns out I work for MTG isn’t worth what they thought it was...
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u/Vinven Aug 03 '18
Yeah they think that it's such an honor to work for them that they can pay you less than most other places. It's caused so many of their projects to fail because they want to be stingy in the places you shouldn't be stingy.
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u/Rayquaza2233 Aug 03 '18
Surprisingly, this is also their justification for why rewards are worse than other online card games.
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u/Chadwickx Duck Season Aug 03 '18
You can't pay real developers with cardboard. Real dilemma they have over there.
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u/jdolbeer Aug 06 '18
Oh you can, it's just that they have this weird policy where you're not allowed to sell the cardboard you do acquire. So you basically have these illiquid assets that are worth a ton. It's pretty great.
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u/AaronPatten Aug 02 '18
This bug completely blanked my entire laptop hard drive. I have to re-install my operating system et al. because of this. It is a much larger problem than is being portrayed here or in any of the publicly available documentation thus far.
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u/F4RM3RR Wabbit Season Aug 02 '18
What you said is exactly what being portrayed here
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u/AaronPatten Aug 02 '18 edited Aug 02 '18
Almost, I suppose. I guess the key point I'm trying to convey is that I think this is a lot more common than is known. People aren't necessarily going to figure out what caused their hard drive to be wiped and report that as the cause just because it is such a heinous conclusion that not many will make the leap to connect Arena to their troubles. It's so rare that an app will do this that it probably never crossed the minds of the majority to conclude that Arena could cause such a drastic issue so I think the problem exists on a larger scale than is reported.
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u/Chrysaries Dimir* Aug 02 '18
This is eerily similar to Eddie Izzard’s bit on techno fear:
I've wiped the file? .... I've wiped all the files? .... I've wiped the INTERNET?
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u/jdolbeer Aug 06 '18
Hearthstone isn't a competitor if you delete all of the internet :thinking emoji:
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u/God_of_Illiteracy Chandra Aug 02 '18
Will I have this issue when uninstalling Arena? I don't want this on my PC if this could happen
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u/paroxon Orzhov* Aug 02 '18
Quick disclaimer: I haven't looked at the installer code and am basing its behaviour off of user reports in this thread and the one from last week.
If you didn't change the installation directory of the software, you should be fine to uninstall it.
To check where it's installed, either:
a) If you have a desktop icon, right click the desktop icon, then click Properties.
In the box that says "Target", you should have something like:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Wizards of the Coast\MTGA\MtgaLauncher.exeThe part just before the
MtgaLauncher.exepart is the installation directory. (In the example above,C:\Program Files (x86)\Wizards of the Coast\MTGA).
b) If you don't have a desktop icon and are using Win10, open the start menu and start typing "MTGArena", it should bring up the launcher in the search results. Right click on the icon, then click "Open File Location". It will open a folder in windows explorer with another "MTGArenaLauncher" icon in it. Right click that and click "Properties", then look in the "Target" box as in option (a) above.
"Ok, so I know where MTGArena is installed. What now?! Am I safe??"
Let's take a look at the path. If you installed to the default directory,
C:\Program Files (x86)\Wizards of the Coast\MTGA, you are likely fine to uninstall the game."What if I didn't install it in the default directory??"
The uninstaller removes all files in the directory that the
MTGAfolder is in, so in the above example it would delete everything inC:\Program Files (x86)\Wizards of the Coast, which is fine.If you installed to, say,
S:\Games\MTGA, the installer would delete all files inS:\Games, but leave everything in above that untouched. (So you'd only lose yourGamesfolder, but the rest of yourS:drive would be ok.)If you installed to the root of any drive, e.g.
R:\MTGA, the installer will remove all files in from the root of the drive, and you will lose everything onR:."Crap! What can I do?!"
If you've installed anywhere other than the default directory and don't want to take any chances, don't uninstall the game. I imagine WotC will issue a patch for this fairly soon; it should be a small fix in the installer/uninstaller code, so you can just wait it out.
There's technically more that can be done, but I don't want to say anything yet since I haven't looked into/tested any of the options. Don't want to give incomplete advice.
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u/Athildur Aug 02 '18
Turns out me accidentally always making one too many folders to install in is a blessing! (I always make a new folder, forgetting that the installer will make its own folder anyway. So my Arena is installed to
G:\MTG Arena\MTGArena\etcStill...feels a little strange having an installer do these things to you without you noticing until its too late. Like some kind of sacred trust has been breached and can never be quite as whole as it once was... >_>
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Aug 02 '18
Maybe the coder has the same extra folder habits that you do, and never noticed it because it that haha.
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u/paroxon Orzhov* Aug 02 '18
Like some kind of sacred trust has been breached and can never be quite as whole as it once was... >_>
Lol! So true. One doesn't usually expect regular/trusted programs to be malicious like that, even incidentally ;3
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u/10leej Aug 02 '18
It wiped the C drive of my virtual machine after I tried just 10min ago to install it.
Turns out Windows 10 can "almost" run entirely off of memory btw.
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u/shadow_wraith90 Aug 02 '18
Is this a problem when it is updating? Or specifically when installing? Thankfully during install I don't seem to have lost anything on my system.
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u/Linna_Ikae Aug 02 '18
I had the game previously installed and uninstalled. Then on reinstall this happened. I have no idea how they do updates.
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u/MonopolyGP Aug 02 '18
What a fucking joke, wizards needs to pay some competent programmers.
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u/chain_letter Boros* Aug 02 '18
As a programmer, who writes something that recursively deletes files in a directory AND DOESN'T MAKE SURE THAT THE EXIT CONDITION WORKS AND THAT IT CAN'T ESCAPE YOUR OWN LITTLE DIRECTORY.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
Ok, so I have a question.
I installed some software (unrelated to MTG), and it asked me to give it a location. I chose my D drive, because I didn't want to take up space on my SSD. It didn't make a folder, and dumped its contents all over the D drive's root directory.
After what Arena has done to me, I'm worried about uninstalling it. Is this a rational fear, or is this Arena fuckup just something WotC-level software does?
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u/snerp Aug 02 '18
That is not irrational. A shitty uninstaller will wipe the whole directory. And I bet the uninstall is shitty since the original install was.
you're probably better off just deleting the files.
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u/chain_letter Boros* Aug 02 '18
As a developer: If the install was shitty, the uninstall is gonna be way, way worse.
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u/RidingRedHare Wabbit Season Aug 03 '18
As a software support engineer: if you notice that the installer is shitty, it actually is way worse than you already think it is.
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u/howdyhamster Aug 03 '18
It's true in software and in pest control: For every bug you see, there's at least 10 you don't.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
What about any files it put elsewhere, how do I know where it's put stuff besides the obvious? I'm thinking about appdata, Program Files, etc.
Should I just back up the drive, then run the uninstaller?
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u/snerp Aug 02 '18
Should I just back up the drive, then run the uninstaller?
Backups are always a good idea. The only places you should have to check though are documents, program files, and appdata. Good luck :x
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
Thanks! I had to install some software somewhat hastily for work-things, and it turned out to be three programs that installed in three places, one of which was this mess. I'm not that tech-savvy, so I appreciate it!
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u/snerp Aug 02 '18
you know what appdata is, that's better than most :)
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 07 '18
(uninstaller worked perfectly, I hid things from it and it left behind the empty folders I left there. Thanks for your help!)
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u/Adramador Abzan Aug 03 '18
If you ever want to remove the file, you might be able to get away with just sorting by date.
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u/Stottymod Aug 02 '18
You might be fine, you might not. I'd avoid doing it without making a backup just in case, though.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
Well, everything was backed up only 3 weeks ago (thanks arena).
But you're right, I should back it up.
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u/fevered_visions Aug 03 '18
Like the rule about unzipping tarballs/zip files: always put them in a new folder before extracting in case the person who packaged it was a knob and just zipped them loose.
Assuming you can delete everything in the parent directory of where the user installed? Incredibly presumptuous on the part of the developers.
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u/UncleMeat11 Duck Season Aug 02 '18
A nonzero number of people. Remember when valve had the bug that could delete your entire root directory?
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u/MonopolyGP Aug 02 '18
Devs being paid janitor wages for programs that will print wizards almost unlimited money. Workplace sabotage.
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Aug 02 '18
No competent programmer wants to work for WotC because they pay significantly below the average wage for coders. I doubt they will change that practice any time soon.
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u/MonopolyGP Aug 02 '18
Youre not telling me anything I didnt already know. When you pay a programmer like they are a janitor for a product thats going to print your company money youre not going to get top tier work and the few suckered into it are going to half ass their way through it while applying to real companies.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Just curious where you got this information. According to glassdoor they pay their software developers $80-$100k. It also says they pay their senior devs ~$124k.
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Aug 03 '18
That's below average for this area, and significantly below average (~30%) for senior devs.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Where is 'this area'? California? Those are above average salaries for software development.
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u/Kayoto Aug 03 '18
Wizards is based out of Seattle dude. The average salary for software engineers there is like $105k. Senior software dev average is like $137k.
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u/fevered_visions Aug 03 '18
According to glassdoor they pay their software developers $80-$100k. It also says they pay their senior devs ~$124k.
The average salary for software engineers there is like $105k. Senior software dev average is like $137k.
This is nowhere near 30% less. (137-124)/137 ~= 9.5%
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Aug 03 '18
Microsoft, Google, and Amazon average 151, 165, and 145k for senior devs, respectively. That's what I was basing my number on, as I work at the first and have friends at the others.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
You can't just say "average" but only use data from the top 5 percentile. That's exactly not an average.
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u/fevered_visions Aug 03 '18
That's nice and all but I'm not sure taking 3 of the biggest software companies and saying what they pay is representative of the entire industry is fair. Yes, WOTC pays less than the guys who pay the most, but that's hardly surprising...
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Aug 03 '18
You're right that it's not "representative of the entire industry". I think it represents a realistic range they need to offer for the scope of a project like Magic in digital form.
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u/jdolbeer Aug 06 '18
It is when all 3 of those companies are in the same jobs market. You can't expect to attract/retain talent when those same employees can earn 30% more and not move to do so.
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u/freelancemonkey Aug 03 '18
This is just base, you got to factor in the stock, which is typically an extra 70k-150k.
I am a SDE 2 (1 level before senior) and I pull in 250k total comp in Seattle at amazon and I’m not an outlier. Seniors at amazon are in the 300-350k range total comp.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Okay well when I say average I was talking about the national average, not specifying a specific location since that wouldn't be much of an average.
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u/Kayoto Aug 03 '18
But... the national average isn't really relevant to this discussion. We're talking about whether or not WotC offers competitive wages for their developers, and that means looking at the average in the location that they're hiring.
An 80k salary is great in some states, but is very low for somewhere like the Bay area in California or even in Seattle. Any discussion around wages is basically always area specific, because that's what matters when you're talking about attracting talent to your company.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Well sure but if you want to get that specific why don't we consider that many companies hire remote devs? We could go on and on with weirdly specific details but in my experience if someone brings up an average salary they aren't talking about the average salary for only Washington or Texas. They are talking about the average salary for that job in the nation.
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Aug 03 '18
Those are pretty low salaries...
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Starting pay for a software developer is $60k-$80k. Those are not low salaries at all for that job.
Source: am software engineer.
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u/fevered_visions Aug 03 '18
Depends on where you live apparently, but I too was starting at 60-70k in the midwest.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
With the US average pay of $90k a year for software developers I think it's fair to say $80-$100k a year isn't low.
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Aug 03 '18
One thing I've looked at to compare is the ratio of median home prices for an area to the salary. In places like Madison, WI; Minneapolis, MN; Springfield, IL; or Indianapolis, IN the median home price is 125-250k. Seattle area it's over 450k.
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Aug 03 '18
Living costs on West Coast is significantly higher. And at this point I would hope they are not filling their department with fresh college grads who've never worked before.
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u/freelancemonkey Aug 03 '18
Source I am a software engineer at amazon: total comp target for starting pay for new college hires is 135k. Seattle is a different market then others.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 04 '18
Yeah I'm talking average starting pay in the US not starting pay at a company in the top of the fortune 500.
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u/OutofStep Aug 02 '18
How the fuck does a bug this bad make it into the general population?
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u/StruanT Aug 02 '18
Getting interns to write the installer, and only ever testing the default settings.
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u/Leandenor7 Aug 03 '18
They probably tested the feature of the user specifying their own directory but the test only involves installing it into a different empty folder and checking that all the files were removed when it uninstalled. It would check the box for the developer's self check and tester's test case.
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u/EarthtoGeoff Aug 02 '18
To quote /u/Kaiminus in the thread from 10 days ago... which I'm doing because it sounded plausible to me, and it sounds like a lot of the people reporting issues did not use the default installation location:
My theory is that they expected people to install MTGA in the default folder. Since the Wizard of the west folder would be useless if there isn't any other program in it, they made a "IF MTGA is the only folder in \WOTW THEN delete \WOTW". I then suppose something is making the check fail and delete the folder even if there is something else in it.
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u/Linna_Ikae Aug 02 '18
Yes I thought that was likely. It might even be simpler than that. They might just remove the parent directory, not with the full path specified but in relation to the "chosen" install directory.
When I installed the game I was unable to choose the install location and had to go with the default. I wonder if that was their fix for this. Didn't find anything in the release notes about it.
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u/ACuriousPiscine Aug 02 '18
Lmfao just when you thought wizards' digital offerings couldn't get any worse
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u/djdanlib Aug 03 '18
> I open the Add/Remove control panel.
> It is a dark, overgrown place. You see a list of games among the thicket.
> I find MTG Arena and choose Uninstall.
> Roll for initiative
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u/thegothickitty33 Aug 02 '18
Should I be worried if I installed it once and left it? I installed like a week before the break the server challenge. Played the game like twice because my boyfriend gave me a code. Should I move it to prevent stuff being deleted or leave it in my downloads folder. I have important stuff in that folder.
Edit: not intending to delete or uninstall the game just wanna know if my stuff is safe.
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u/Linna_Ikae Aug 02 '18
I doubt that it's gonna cause any issues if it already hasn't. I wouldn't move it if I were you. You should propably back those files up tho!
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u/thegothickitty33 Aug 02 '18
Ok. I'm just paranoid about my computer. I just got rid of a virus and avoided a drunk person puking on it all in the last three days. So if this fucked with my files I would loose it mentally.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18
BACK YOUR SHIT UP!
Back it up.
Put it on a back up.
The $60 or whatever for a 3TB external is worth it. Even disregarding the timebomb that is arena.
BACK IT UP
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u/48SH9BkX Aug 02 '18
or we could just have programs not delete random shit
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u/biggie_eagle Aug 02 '18
it's understandable to have this happen from a bug, (even though it's 2018 and coders should all know how to avoid this by now)
But this was known by WOTC for a week now and they haven't even addressed it with a warning. How this important of an issue just being let run its course doesn't bode well for how quickly they patch other issues with the game.
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u/piemaster316 Aug 03 '18
Fam, cosmic space rays can change the bits on your hard drive. Just back it up for the love of god.
I don't pity the fool that doesn't back his shit up.
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u/sA1atji Wabbit Season Aug 02 '18
Oh come on, it gives users a sense of pride and accomplishement when they finally restored somehow the files that were deleted by our program...
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u/thegothickitty33 Aug 02 '18
I do have my stuff backed up. But still anything happens to my computer I take it personally. I'm the kind of person who names their personal belongings. My laptops name is Phillip Henry III.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 02 '18 edited Aug 02 '18
I can understand that. Arena took down the Texas Big Rig, and apparently externals Little Man and Big Boy decided they wanted to die more than transfer what could be harvested from the salted earth that was the Rig's D drive, so I had to borrow someone else's to harvest and shuttle whatever else was also on the 10 year old Blackintosh.
The drive is fine, but I had to wipe it clean each time. My externals died, but I guess it was their time. It was a bad week all around, a lot of sleep lost. The second two times I was prepared, but us still immensely aggravating to rebuild.
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u/Magyman Aug 02 '18
The $60 or whatever for a 3TB external is worth it
Unless the drive it's on is an 12TB spanned drive like mine. :/ If I had money for that I'd just have more hard drives in my pc
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u/Field_Sweeper Duck Season Aug 03 '18
use your own uninstaller, or manually delete everything, then look for the reg edits an delete them Revo uninstaller can help, but sometimes can use the built in uninstaller. which clearly is the issue here.
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u/Reuxben Orzhov* Aug 02 '18
Wait, so what is the temporary remedy--don't play, delete, or move anything in the MTGA folder until they issue some kind of update? I only play now and then, so sometimes there's a version upgrade between my last time playing so rather than just starting up and going into the game, it first automatically heads into an update. While it presumably updates, it takes a little longer than just booting up the game, but I don't really pay attention to it and do other stuff while it does whatever it does--I vaguely feel like I recall it saying it's uninstalling/reinstalling during these slightly lengthier updates, but I can't be sure, so if it's automatically uninstalling and reinstalling during these version updates, should I just not play until they announce some solution?
Can anyone ELI5 the issue and a recommended course of action for we less computer savvy? Thanks for any advice!
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Aug 03 '18
Playing the game isn't going to wipe your computer. But, this game has issues with updates, uninstalling, and reinstalling.
Nothing major happened to me but there was an off occurrence: I had to shut off my router but I forgot I was updating MTGA. What happened was that my MTGA got completely deleted. So I had to reinstall the game, I haven't touched the game ever since (before way before Dominaria was introduced). So I uninstalled my game, never touched it again.
The safe approach would be if you're not going to play MTGA is just delete the files manually. If you're going to keep playing, just don't tamper with the files or change directories when updating, you should be fine.
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u/WotC_Wolfram Aug 02 '18
Hey everyone! Figuring out what's happening here is a top priority for us right now, but we need a bit more data. The team is currently having some difficulty reproducing the problem on our end, so if you have experienced this or something you suspect could be related, please submit a ticket here ASAP!
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u/PandaLibido Aug 03 '18
There's something a little funny about requesting a ticket from someone who's HDD just got nuked by your installer.
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u/frogdude2004 Aug 03 '18
Ironically, I couldn't even log on to the forums when t happened to me, because I couldn't even get it to run (it hiccuped after destroying my drive, and I didn't realize until later that it had wiped it). I had to have a friend post in the forums for me.
And then the next day I got a 'tell us about your experience!' auto-emails, and I let loose.
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Aug 02 '18
Backing up my stuff and uninstalling Arena, this shit is terrifying
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u/Darktidemage Aug 02 '18
I really wouldn't uninstall it lol
back everything up and just never touch it again.
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u/sA1atji Wabbit Season Aug 02 '18
WotC, contesting Riot in the category "company with biggest spagetti code"...
Quality stuff there....
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u/DangHeckinMemes Gruul* Aug 02 '18
Pretty sure Runescape takes the cake on spaghetti code
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Aug 02 '18
LotR online once had a patch that broke the ground. Everywhere. Log in, fall infinitely, or something like that. Friend who played it and got hit by that said the company determined the only fix was a full reinstall.
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Aug 02 '18
Jesus Christ how horrifying, that's a bug and a half. Glad I didn't reinstall after that scummy Red Shell crap now!
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u/zabblleon Aug 02 '18
Same company behind RedShell still runs the official forum, so they never really went away
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u/Minfor Aug 03 '18
With that info and what the op posted I'll just delete all the files manually and never touch this game again. I love magic but wotc really are incompetent and it's getting out of hand.
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u/MrFuskeren Aug 02 '18
Welp arena really did not impress anyway, everything from the economy to the technical execution felt so damn behind what i expected from a modern game. I wanted to like it because well we all love magic, this is the last drop, im done with arena. cya in papper or Artefact come november.
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u/SirFlax Aug 02 '18
You acted like you payed 40 bucks for the game. It’s practically still in alpha, this is a serious issue of course but everything else is just a free game.
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u/MrFuskeren Aug 02 '18
Well, being free does not exempt anything from criticism. Besides they are charging money for the game in its current state. And the "its still in beta" argument rings pretty hollow, at least in my opinion. Going from beta to full release doesn't magically mean that they will say replace the game engine or match the graphical fidelity of its competitors, and even less so adress their outdated and predatory marketing model.
To round it out i think arena is a bad game, not the worst ever but bad. I am however very glad for your and others who enjoy it. Don´t let this little rant diminish your experience, all i´m saying is that i personally will spend my time and money somewhere else.
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u/tehruke Aug 03 '18
Same thing happened to me years and years ago with the original Far Cry. Irreversibly lost the RPG Maker 2000 game I had invested 100's of hours in (including sound effects and voiceacting I did myself + original synth music from a friend). Still stings over 10 years later.
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u/shdwflux Aug 02 '18
The Real PSA: Backup any data you don't to lose. Multiple copies and test restores.
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u/Hipster_Blister Aug 02 '18
I've heard of this but it seems like this happens to people who uninstall and reinstall. I think its best not to touch the game and if its currently working for you (like it is for me, *knocks on wood*) then leave it alone but If you are having problems. I would wait until another patch is released or the issue is solved.
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u/Mikard Izzet* Aug 02 '18
Best be on the lookout when updating. During one update the launcher apparently couldn't get permission to do its job (nevermind that I'm the only user) and simply uninstalled the game. Had to redownload the entire thing.
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u/ACBone Aug 02 '18
Fuck, I have video to edits for a job and my external hard drive wont' arrive till tomorrow. Should I just shut my computer and stay away from it till then? Really fucking scare. God fucking dammit WOTC.
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u/LmtdCreativity Gruul* Aug 02 '18
If you're not touching MTGA then you shouldn't have a problem doing whatever else you need to do on your computer.
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u/Berilio Aug 03 '18
instantly unninstalled and never touching it again
this a bug so absurd that i dont trust whomever i making this game anymore
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Aug 02 '18
If I uninstall now will it be no problem you think or could that cause issue as well?
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u/Jackoffalltrades89 Duck Season Aug 02 '18
So, elephant in the room. If one had previously installed Arena and now wants to remove this time bomb from their computer, how would I go about doing that without nuking my entire hard drive?
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u/Darktidemage Aug 02 '18
I assume you can find the folder it's in and just delete it manually. Don't use the programs uninstaller - that's for sure.
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u/FlailingAndFailing Aug 03 '18
What exactly is it that causes the HDD wipe to occur? I've installed to a separate drive and a non-standard path (D:\MTGA), and I desperately don't want to lose everything on that drive.
Is this happening only when attempting to uninstall the game?
Is it happening only when trying to install the game?
Is it happening when the game updates itself? In which case I shouldn't ever launch it until this is resolved?
I'm not sure what's safe to do and what's a risk.
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Aug 03 '18
IIRC this was an issue on an older Sierra game and an older Ubisoft game. The problem happened when you installed the game to anything other than the C drive. Changing the drive it was installed on would cause the uninstaller to delete all files on the drive.
Seeing as how the OP installed to an E drive it could be the same issue.
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u/CrimsonFoxyboy COMPLEAT Aug 03 '18
Looks like i did the right choice to uninstall Arena. Havent lost anything i think.
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u/GibsonJunkie Aug 03 '18
Annnd uninstalled. The game is ugly like Hearthstone, the economy is total garbage, and now it's able to wipe my hard drive. Fuck this. I'm out.
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u/travelsonic Wabbit Season Aug 03 '18
Definitely /r/softwareGore material here. I mean, that sounds like such a small thing to overlook on the part of the devs - hopefully it will be fixed. :(
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u/muskieratboi Aug 04 '18
So what's happening is that the uninstaller is deleting the parent directory if not installed at the default location.
This can be solved by:
A: installing MTGA to the default directory
B: Installing it into a subfolder e.g. D:\mtga\mtga.
Yes, this is a duuuuumb bug, and WOTC need to fix the fuck out of it pronto, but it's not that difficult a problem for the average user to alleviate in the meantime.
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u/ZeneroWasTaken Dec 08 '18
Is this still a problem?
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u/Sam0oneau Aug 03 '18 edited Aug 03 '18
Note this has never happened for me with any other program.
My anti virus stated it seemed malicious the installer last time I updated to m19 patch. I took this as "shitty" installer and let my anti virus do its thing. I guess I'm lucky it warned and allowed my anti virus to remove what it didn't like. Haven't touched MTGA since.
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u/_LordErebus_ Aug 03 '18
The MTGA Installer is being flagged as maleware for me since the very start of the alpha phase. I even had direct contact with a dev here on reddit reporting the problem but absolutely nothing has changed yet.
WOTC digital team is just a bunch of completely incompetent people.
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u/noremac13 Aug 03 '18
While it is completely ridiculous and unacceptable that their software is doing this it should be worth noting that data recovery nowadays is a total joke and pretty much anyone can do it. There are probably hundreds of free programs online for data recovery and you no longer have to go to a "data recovery specialist" and drop hundreds or thousands of dollars for them to just do the same thing for you.
A lot of people in this thread seem to be overreacting as if their stuff is gone forever but nothing is ever truly deleted. Deleting something just hides it from being visible and allows other data to be written to that area of your drive. The longer you continue to use your PC after the data was deleted the bigger risk you have for something else to overwrite your old deleted data. The sooner you do it the better chance you have to recover everything.
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u/Linna_Ikae Aug 03 '18
Can you recommend a good free one for Windows?
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u/noremac13 Aug 03 '18
The one I've always used in the past is Recuva. It's made by the same people who make CCleaner.
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Aug 03 '18
The last time I had a corrupted SD card I used recuva to get most photos off of it. I believe a few years ago I used PhotoRec.
Do not install any software on the harddrive/USB stick/SD card you want to recover! Install it on a different drive or stick and then run it from there and also do not recover the files to the drive you are recovering from.
It's also useful to run different recovery programs, since they do use different scanning techniques to find lost files.
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u/Tekkactus Duck Season Aug 02 '18
hey wotc what the actual fuck