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Deleting the game doesn't delete worlds (Bedrock: Windows 10)

I have lost multiple worlds by accident by deleting the game. I simply forgot to move the worlds out of the folder they were saved in. That folder gets deleted with the game. Therefore all the worlds are deleted with it.

I needed to uninstall the game to reinstall an older version.

All I'm asking is for Minecraft Bedrock for Windows 10 to keep a backup of the worlds somewhere that can't be deleted by deleting the game. It needs to be manually deleted.

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15 Comments

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  • 9
    Registered User commented
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    I really appreciate this. When you delete minecraft, before deleting it should ask to make a backup of your world. When you reinstall it, it should ask to add the backup worlds again.

  • 9
    Registered User commented
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    I just deleted my kids' worlds because it was not made clear that uninstalling would delete worlds. This *needs* to be addressed. Please make it absolutely clear that uninstalling will delete worlds.

  • 9
    Registered User commented
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    I'm in the same boat, I deleted my game thinking the worlds would be there when I reinstalled it. Nope - dozens of hours of play lost, because the program doesn't retain the player's worlds upon game deletion.

    It's important to note: deleting the user's worlds / characters when the game is deleted is not how other video games behave. The vast majority remove operating files but keep saved information, and when the game is reinstalled, they also check for pre-existing data to use and seamlessly recover it.

    As a UX designer, from a user experience perspective, the process for retaining / deleting saves should behave as closely to how other games behave to ensure a consistent / low-friction experience. This is not the quality I would expect from Microsoft for such a well-known game - I hope it changes.

  • 4
    Registered User commented
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    Since you need to uninstall/reinstall Minecraft to opt in and out of betas or fix installation issues, this is a massive oversight. Found this out the hard way and lost all my worlds. Saves should absolutely be left alone when uninstalling/reinstalling Minecraft!

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    A person should be able to pick a save folder when you install the game. And the default should be to your OneDrive. The fact that people can lose their worlds by uninstalling a game is ridiculous. 

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    Same. Uninstalled to install the new launcher and lo and behold it deletes the save game too. This is the only game that deletes saves when uninstalling. Why? Esp since it can be a long running game. Also, the saves should be easier to backup.

  • 2
    Registered User commented
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    Yeah I just lost a lot of nostalgic worlds to that. I had really bad issues for some reason with minecraft in that every few minutes of playing in a world it would crash so I figured it was a bit flip and procceded to uninstall the game and reinstall it not taking into account that all the worlds I loved would be delete. Man that hurts a ton, that litterally just happened like 5 minutes ago. 

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    I’m honestly bummed. I just deleted Minecraft thinking when I reinstall it I would have all my worlds saved or at least in my pc folder. Just to realize that it permanently deleted your saved worlds along with it. Dozen of hours gone just like that. Please ask us before deleting if we would like to have our saved worlds in a separate file ):

  • 3
    Registered User commented
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    Yes this needs to happen. Me and my girlfriend just lost a 3 year survival world to this. All that time was pretty much for nothing.

  • 1
    Registered User commented
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    my game just deleted itself and my maxed world i spent 3 years on is gone forever

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I don’t understand how this hasn’t been fixed yet.

    I just painfully discovered this issue when I had an issue with Realms and contacted customer support via chat, where the agent instructed me to uninstall/reinstall both Minecraft and the launcher, only for me to find my games gone. Months of playing with my kids, and my very first survival world all gone in a blink and without so much as a “warning, uninstalling the game will delete your saved worlds”. Nothing.

    I’ve been a PC gamer for decades now, and this still surprised me, because literally no other game I’ve ever played behaved this way. Huge, terrible oversight by Mojang/Microsoft.

    Oh, and btw, the agent did not understand that Bedrock/PC/Win11 locally saved worlds can’t be recovered by some magic Realms cloud solution. Now my options are to pay for a data recovery tool, or resign myself to the lost time.

    Heartbreaking, to say the least.

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    I had no idea this app could delete data from my AppData folder. Like others Ive lost some great worlds after a forced Minecraft re-install. Not only that, but my PC also started automatically deleting the USB backup of the AppData folder when I plugged it in to restore the files! So crazy watching an entire folder of files just start disappearing. Going to stick with Java version from now on, Windows 10 app is a big letdown. 

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    deleted minecraft due to a few issues thinking uninstalling would fix the problem, but after reinstalling it and logging back in just to see my minecraft world gone, i even looked in the minecraftWorlds file and saves file but nothing was there smh. about 2 years of that survival world gone, me, my bf, my friends had fun while it lasted. 

    minecraft should really give us a warning before uninstalling. 

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Just lost all my saves when I updated to the new launcher. 3 of which were from 2015 or so. I luckily found copies but they are from 2019 and are missing several years of updates. I feel like I've lost a loved one lol

  • 0
    Registered User commented
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    Same here. In general a really bad game/launcher setup. Would not upgrade to latest version on laptop with my kid's saved world, resorted to uninstall/reinstall. World gone. Extraordinarily poor in so many ways. Game is not trivial to update in the first place, no automatic backup made, one button press irreversibly trashes many hours of work. Completely against general microsoft/windows principles that should at the very least have an "are you sure?" dialog warning of consequences, and should be reversible in some way.