54 Games Missing From Steam Library

Question

Since Steam forced its new "improved" UI on its users, 54 games have vanished from my library—and that's just ONE Steam account; two others are similarly afflicted. All owned games show up in Games Owned in user profile, but one cannot MANAGE the games (install or launch, et cetera) from there.

Shortly before this new undesired and disastrous change in the UI, I had reset my Steam Library preferences to default, removing all category settings. Now the old settings are back, and it's a hopeless mess.

Answer 1

In all probability a specific filter is set in the new UI, preventing you from seeing all games.

There are several ways this can be changed:

1. Maybe the dedicated button to filter out games that are currently unavailable is switched on:

   

2. There is a myriad of preset tags to choose from to filter your game library to create 'Dynamic Collections', and this might have filtered out part of your library:

   

3. Lastly, there is a drop-down menu to the left of the former two options, that allows you to filter software, videos, and tools. The option for 'Games' might be deselected:

   

Answer 2

I found for me that the "missing games" weren't actually games. I have my library set up into 2 Collections: Favorites and Uncategorized. You can see that there is a lot missing from Uncategorized:

Similar to the answer from @Joachim, if you go into the filter settings and select Unplayed, a new category called "Tools" will appear. Here I see a bunch of dedicated servers for games I've never installed, as well as a few SDK's and other things.

Answer 3

I've since fiddled about with the "improved" interface to realize something, but first, for the benefit of those not able to understand how this came to be an issue for me (I am not alone in this, not by a long chalk; thousands of Steam users have multiple Steam account): While you SHOULD be able to catalog games by account and see the categories accurately delineate ownership...but the interface does not always behave the same from account to account.

The easiest way to avoid the issue is to be proactive, immediately move just-purchased games from Uncategorized to the appropriate category.

When you don't avoid the problem, when you initiate game installation you will be notified that you are borrowing—assuming you have granted library sharing rights across all of your accounts—such-and-such a game from such-and-such an account—when installation is attempted from an account other than that of the owner.

All change is not necessarily good or necessary, and the latest change to the Steam "browser" (not accurate nomenclature!) was neither beneficial nor needed. Library organization was far, far easier and accurate in the old interface...but neither do I entertain any absurd notions that there will ever be a "design rollback" just to make this cranky old man smile.

Answer 4

I found the most satisfactory solution possible by experimentation:

At first, I was unable to modify or edit the categories and the items within them, because the new system works differently from the old system. The total number of games in all owned accounts are somewhat accurately tracked (accurate for currently logged-in account, not so much for the others).

Uninstalling Steam and cleaning the registry doesn't work; undesired settings are restored from the cloud upon reinstallation. The best I could do was delete all but the uncategorized groupings and/or the items within them [via context menu] (deleting all the items in a category removes that category).

I've been a Steam member since 2007 and a computer user since 1984. I had to make handwritten lists of owned games in the accounts' profiles and compare them to all the uncategorized games (a must!) before I could determine whether or not any were indeed missing. This was a process requiring many hours of boringly repetitive work, which I would not have had to perform otherwise (So thank you, Steam, for making this SO accursedly confusing).