Deleted Proton prefix

I don't have the steps to reproduce but today I uninstalled a few Proton games and the Proton prefix has been deleted too, I lost a few settings and saves stores in the prefixes

I think Steam should never remove the proton prefix, I lost several hours worth of configurations, and lost local save files :(

What i remember doing today

• Uninstalling Proton games
• Switching between Windows/Linux native version for testing

Steam Client Beta
Proton 6.3-2
-------------- 
OS: Arch Linux x86_64 
Kernel: 5.11.16-zen1-1-zen 
Uptime: 47 mins 
Packages: 1096 (pacman) 
Shell: bash 5.1.4 
Resolution: 1920x1080 
DE: Cinnamon 4.8.6 
WM: Mutter (Muffin) 
WM Theme: Mojave-dark (Mojave-dark) 
Theme: Mojave-dark [GTK2/3] 
Icons: McMojave-circle-blue [GTK2/3] 
Terminal: guake 
CPU: Intel i7-4770K (8) @ 3.900GHz 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 
Memory: 2361MiB / 15937MiB

Note to readers: If you are looking to protect your proton prefix here is a possible workaround to prevent Steam from deleting it, this will create a .protected file in each folders and the directory will be undeletable until you unprotect it.

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# *** Steam prefix protect
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo find /path/to/prefix -type d -exec touch "{}"/.protected \; -exec chattr +i "{}"/.protected \;

#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# *** Steam prefix unprotect
#-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sudo find /path/to/prefix -name .protected -type f -exec chattr -i "{}" \; -exec rm "{}" \;

The report names no source files or tests and provides no reproducible steps; start by checking whether the behavior belongs to Proton or the Steam Client, using the listed uninstall and version-switching actions. Done would require a confirmed reproduction and a defined expected policy for retaining prefixes, with a regression test if the responsible component is identified.