A Minecraft: Dungeons uninstall bug was live for a short time and it caused some serious problems. According to one user, uninstalling the game had deleted all of their data on their SSD.
The bug in question is MCL-14107 - Launcher wipes entire SSD when uninstalling. Images have been going around on Twitter today, showing the original post before it was fixed. Understandably, people were quite worried about potentially losing all of the data on their storage devices.
Since the bug's initial discovery, there's been a fair bit of panic (and some misinformation, too). The good news is that it's been fixed, but you're going to need to take some steps to ensure that you're safe.
The Fix for the Minecraft: Dungeons Uninstall Bug
If you've been hit by this bug, you may have lost a significant amount of data. You might be out of luck for getting that data back, although you can certainly try standard data recovery processes.
For now, the most important thing you should know is this: do not uninstall Minecraft: Dungeons if you haven't updated the game! Here's what Mojang's Marcio Oliveira had to say about it:
When a player selected a custom "Install Location" in the Dungeons installation dialog, the Dungeons Launcher was taking that location and naively considering that only files written by the Dungeons Launcher would live there. Thus, when uninstalling the Launcher, the uninstall logic would simply delete that "Install Location" folder, to leave no traces of program files created by the Launcher on disk.
We didn't consider that the custom location chosen by players could also have files belonging to other programs in it. And unfortunately, we didn't catch that in tests. So the bug would only impact players who had selected a custom install location for Dungeons where other program files also exist, then tried to uninstall the Dungeons Launcher.
— Marcio Oliveira, Mojang
Thankfully, that same message from Marcio Oliveira indicates that the bug has already been fixed. If you're worried about the Minecraft: Dungeons uninstall bug, you should be fine as long as you've updated the game to its most recent version.
It should also be noted that this bug only applied to the "Launcher" version of the game; if you grabbed Minecraft: Dungeons through the Microsoft Store (or on consoles), you should be safe.
As long as you update the Launcher version of the game, you'll be safe. If you haven't yet picked up Minecraft: Dungeons, you can get it for PC and consoles via the Minecraft website.
Were you affected by the Minecraft: Dungeons uninstall bug? What do you think of Mojang's response to the error? Let us know in the comments below!
