Only the OGs will remember when Steam would sometimes rm -rf /* your system. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3671
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Huh, did it really do that? I remember installing steam for Linux as soon as beta was available but never had this happen to me
It explains in the GitHub link.
There was a line of code:rm -rf "$STEAMROOT/"*
If you remove the definition of $STEAMROOT, then it appears to be interpreted as rm -rf /