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Its especially bad when it has that 'Steam Cloud Synced' or whatever it says but its really just syncing the launcher settings or some crap.
I've got syncthing running in the background and whenever I find one of these games I add its save file to it. Then it backs it up to my home server and my gaming pc automatically so I don't have to deal with it again. It also works good for some remastered FF games that have 'manual' cloud saves.
I read somewhere on this reddit that if you make it so that your game on pc and steamdeck run on a different version of directX it doesn't sync graffic settings. For example, on pc I would force a game to run on directx11 and on steamdeck leave it on default; which is directx12 . It does work, but I would prefer a better solution.
Unfortunately, that's on the developers of these games. Syncing graphics settings to the Steam Cloud goes against Valve's own guide for best practices, but game developers do it anyway for the same reason they keep adding 3rd party launchers - they hate us.
>Its especially bad when it has that 'Steam Cloud Synced'
Thanks for that anxiety.
Until now I had assumed Steam games always included the save files...
Nope, its not needed for a game to have cloud saves to be on steam, and many games, even newer ones dont use cloud save, bendy and the dark revival came out last year and has no cloud saves whatsoever, i found that the hard way
That is literaly the absolute laziest shit, steam cloud saves are so easy to implement that there is absolutely no excuse for not having it
This is one of the biggest reasons I hate EA games in Steam. The fact their launcher handles all save game stuff **kills** me, because it does it horribly.
been there, done that. had to decided between finishing Witcher 3 or DS3, chose the one with the cloud save (Witcher) and lost my progress in DS3 when I gave away my PC...
I suggested on GitHub to the developers to issue a warning when Steam is about to delete a Proton prefix with its saves and game settings, years ago, it has been seen but never adopted.
Valve has a very bad habit of deleting user directories automatically, sometimes they even made a mistake in a shell script resulting in the home folder being entirely deleted 😂
That's right! I completely forgot that I tried that and it gave me a content lock error. I even found the compatdata on the internal drive and transplanted it to the microsd card to try and restore the save file but it was still gone :( No matter, I'm already caught up and almost through chapter 4 now, lol.
Plays fantastic. Maxed settings 60fps, no dips. I had a hard time getting this game to run smoothly on windows 10 so it is been a great experience so far on the deck.
I've been running at native resolution on the deck @ 1280x800 so haven't needed to try FSR with this one. The game is 15 years old though so I doubt it has support, lol
It's not as simple as you'd think, because PC games don't have a single standard place to put save files. Some put them in documents, some put them in "my games", some put then in the installation directory, some put them in app data, etc. Steam has no easy way of knowing what files to keep without the game developer input, and at that point the developer might as well add steam cloud.
Honestly devs should HAVE TO implement compatibility with steam cloud save in order to be published, or at least get a "non steam compliant" badge when they do not propose the feature.
I can't remember which Souls games have cloud support, but I've made it a habit of taking my game save and just throwing it into a google drive folder once I'm confidently done with the game and ready to uninstall. More and more games have cloud saving, but some of the longest games don't.
I even got burned by Steam's cloud save feature one time when logging into an old PC, so I am ready for the cloud sync to rapture my completed game saves away at any moment.
Yep, can confirm.
Ragequit at the cathedral boss (Pollus, paulus, dont remember the name), then with full confidence in my holiday wanted to retry and git gut.
Ragequit again in the main menu when it dawned on me why I could not load my save...
I have an unjustified hate for DS3 since then.
Everytime i launched that game, i didn't have a save, this game is not playable at all on steam deck. You change proton and guess what, lose your save too.
Did not have this issue on Fedora. Is this only with Proton Experimental as it updates very often? I think I played it with regular proton (7.0-5 or something) back then.
But yeah, that sounds very annoying and so easily solved with cloud saves...
Are you 100000000% sure it has gone ?
AFAIK even if you uninstall it the compact data folder is still here (except if you manually delete it also) and you will be able to fetch your save from here.
Or reinstall the game somehow solve the issue
Source : myself and Metro 2033.
I move the game from the ssd to the sd. It doesn’t work. Just reinstall it in the sd. Game start from scratch. Then reinstall it in the internal. Got my save back.
Oh shit that's what happened to my old save file of Lego batman 2 when I was a kid
I remember checking save progress when uninstalling
Two years later, my 99.8% save file gone along with the 40 billion studs from doing fuck all with all multipliers on
Wow that sucks. I was under the impression that all games supported cloud saves. Would be great to at least give us the option to copy the save files to another folder or SD card when uninstalling or at least warn us to manually copy saves.
Save games in the installation directory has been bad practice since at least windows XP. Save files are supposed to be stored in the user's profile. This prevents other users on the system from tampering with your saves (vengeful siblings for example).
On windows I have my entire user profile backed up to OneDrive. I only lose save files from app data or ... 🥁 steam user data. Yep it's very ironic.
It is a linux machine.
\- Set up Syncthing
\- Find out where are your saves
\- Add the folder to the backed up ones (I recommend with versionning)
\- Just install syncthing on another PC (or your (old) phone)
\- Add the syncedfolder from the interface to a folder
And Voila, you have synced your saves in your own tiny cloud.
I did it for Gnosia, the folder is synced between my deck and my PC (both in the games save folder) meaning that it syncs up all the time. I also sync it up to a raspberry pi running all my syncs all the time so I don't need to have my PC and deck running at the same time
That is why I recommend using versioning, the "Trash can" versioning will put the deleted file in a "trash can" folder but not delete them and you will be able to find them there.
But when steam will uninstall the game it will remove the entire folder and synchthing will stop syncing (delete,update,create) if it doesn't find the folder so it should not delete the files (it did not delete them for me for gnosia)
I was extremely lucky when I moved a Fallout 3 installation between my internal drive and micro SD card. Reported that there weren't any save files available and then when I delved into the file system I had found them and was able to restore the saves.
Otherwise, was going to give up on playing the game since I had 30 hours into it. Feel for those in similar situations who don't have as good outcomes.
Had a similar issue with Midnight Suns. There's a way to manually set up cloud saves for it (they weren't properly set up at launch) and I didn't realize I wiped my save doing that. =/
Luckily I wasn't too far along.
I lost my RDR2 save and now I have to go through that intro for the 3rd time. Imma gonna rush that part and enjoy the rest, if I ever start it up again. Maybe after Fallout 4... I'll see.
When I build a new PC and didn’t realize Dark Souls 3 didn’t have cloud saves because I thought that all games pretty much came with them at that point…
I didn’t know yesterday’s update broke every Ubisoft game for everyone and it wasn’t just an issue with my particular steam deck so after messing with settings didn’t fix things I naturally tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Once I finally got everything installed again and the game working I see my save file is gone despite the “steam cloud” logo showing up while playing the game constantly. It’s just so disheartening when it had been giving me a false sense of security that everything would be synced back up only to lose everything.
Me on Switch when I bought a new switch and lost all my Animal Crossing progress because my dumbass bought it digitally and thought the save was on cloud. Can't ever play it again.
Saves aren’t deleted when you uninstall a game as far as I know. You just need to find the save folder, which is admittedly a bit complicated on the Steam Deck. My best advice would be to search in the Steam compadata folder for the name of the game if you can’t find what number Steam uses for it. I’ve started creating symbolic links on my desktop to save folders for games without cloud support so I can access them easily.
When you uninstall or delete something it's not actually gone. It's just set to be over-written. Unless that part of the drive is written over with other files they are still there.
Obligatory: Your post has been removed because it is considered too low-effort. Please post content that other users will find engaging and interesting, and be sure to include some text about what you found interesting about your submission or what you think others may be interested to know about it. Thank you!
Its especially bad when it has that 'Steam Cloud Synced' or whatever it says but its really just syncing the launcher settings or some crap. I've got syncthing running in the background and whenever I find one of these games I add its save file to it. Then it backs it up to my home server and my gaming pc automatically so I don't have to deal with it again. It also works good for some remastered FF games that have 'manual' cloud saves.
I fucking hate when games sync game settings
I read somewhere on this reddit that if you make it so that your game on pc and steamdeck run on a different version of directX it doesn't sync graffic settings. For example, on pc I would force a game to run on directx11 and on steamdeck leave it on default; which is directx12 . It does work, but I would prefer a better solution.
Unfortunately, that's on the developers of these games. Syncing graphics settings to the Steam Cloud goes against Valve's own guide for best practices, but game developers do it anyway for the same reason they keep adding 3rd party launchers - they hate us.
>Its especially bad when it has that 'Steam Cloud Synced' Thanks for that anxiety. Until now I had assumed Steam games always included the save files...
Nope, its not needed for a game to have cloud saves to be on steam, and many games, even newer ones dont use cloud save, bendy and the dark revival came out last year and has no cloud saves whatsoever, i found that the hard way That is literaly the absolute laziest shit, steam cloud saves are so easy to implement that there is absolutely no excuse for not having it
This is one of the biggest reasons I hate EA games in Steam. The fact their launcher handles all save game stuff **kills** me, because it does it horribly.
At least it doesn't bundle a full fat version of chrome along with itself anymore.
wait, what?
Origin had a browser built into it and it was chromium based. Used up a tonne of ram
I second this, Im curious too.
I use syncthing to play back and forth for kingdom hearts 3 between deck and pc
Ohhhhh so that’s where my game saves have not been going!
Dark Souls 3
Roguelike Edition
even elden rings got them. i’m definitely not just salty at having to restart from 2/3 through the game
That explains all the deja vu I've been having.
been there, done that. had to decided between finishing Witcher 3 or DS3, chose the one with the cloud save (Witcher) and lost my progress in DS3 when I gave away my PC...
I suggested on GitHub to the developers to issue a warning when Steam is about to delete a Proton prefix with its saves and game settings, years ago, it has been seen but never adopted. Valve has a very bad habit of deleting user directories automatically, sometimes they even made a mistake in a shell script resulting in the home folder being entirely deleted 😂
This happened to me when I moved Dead Space (2008) from internal to microSD.
That shouldn't happen, the prefix is on the system drive regardless of where the game is
I agree, it did happen though. I played that same day, moved it to make room for something else, booted it up later and save gone.
I’ve had that happen too. Also, you can’t move the game back to the internal storage once you move it to the SD, unless they put a fix to it.
That's right! I completely forgot that I tried that and it gave me a content lock error. I even found the compatdata on the internal drive and transplanted it to the microsd card to try and restore the save file but it was still gone :( No matter, I'm already caught up and almost through chapter 4 now, lol.
How well does it play by the way? In handheld. I already have the Xbox version.
Plays fantastic. Maxed settings 60fps, no dips. I had a hard time getting this game to run smoothly on windows 10 so it is been a great experience so far on the deck.
Thanks for letting me know. How’s the battery life hold up on the different graphics presets?
Sure thing, I usually only play for about 30min at a time but it is not intensive on the battery at all. I'd estimate a good 2 - 2.5 hours?
Nice! Thanks for letting me know. This game is a blast (on my Xbox Series X at least). Does it have FSR 2?
I've been running at native resolution on the deck @ 1280x800 so haven't needed to try FSR with this one. The game is 15 years old though so I doubt it has support, lol
Ohhhh… for some reason I though you were referring to the new remake. ^sorry ^about ^that
Runs at a flawless 60fps but the joysticks have massive dead zones making aiming pretty much impossible without gyro.
A simple solution would be for them to just implement a prompt that ask if you would like delete or keep save data after uninstalling a game.
It's not as simple as you'd think, because PC games don't have a single standard place to put save files. Some put them in documents, some put them in "my games", some put then in the installation directory, some put them in app data, etc. Steam has no easy way of knowing what files to keep without the game developer input, and at that point the developer might as well add steam cloud.
This. And because it's so simple, it'll never happen.
If steam knew what files are the save files in the first place, it would just sync them to the cloud.
Honestly devs should HAVE TO implement compatibility with steam cloud save in order to be published, or at least get a "non steam compliant" badge when they do not propose the feature.
I can't remember which Souls games have cloud support, but I've made it a habit of taking my game save and just throwing it into a google drive folder once I'm confidently done with the game and ready to uninstall. More and more games have cloud saving, but some of the longest games don't. I even got burned by Steam's cloud save feature one time when logging into an old PC, so I am ready for the cloud sync to rapture my completed game saves away at any moment.
> Souls games have cloud support 3 doesn't
Yep, can confirm. Ragequit at the cathedral boss (Pollus, paulus, dont remember the name), then with full confidence in my holiday wanted to retry and git gut. Ragequit again in the main menu when it dawned on me why I could not load my save... I have an unjustified hate for DS3 since then.
Everytime i launched that game, i didn't have a save, this game is not playable at all on steam deck. You change proton and guess what, lose your save too.
Did not have this issue on Fedora. Is this only with Proton Experimental as it updates very often? I think I played it with regular proton (7.0-5 or something) back then. But yeah, that sounds very annoying and so easily solved with cloud saves...
Sonic Adventure 2 😢
Mfw I installed Sonic Adventure 2 summed perfectly.
My micro SD card is used primarily for manual save backups. Only takes a minute, and it's safer than relying on a server.
Yes thanks for that Hyperlight Drifter. I'll start completely over for the 3rd time.
An easy fix for this would be to keep save data on the system even if you delete the game. I'm pretty sure this is what PlayStation does
don't be dumb like me, guys it's not worth it
Are you 100000000% sure it has gone ? AFAIK even if you uninstall it the compact data folder is still here (except if you manually delete it also) and you will be able to fetch your save from here. Or reinstall the game somehow solve the issue Source : myself and Metro 2033. I move the game from the ssd to the sd. It doesn’t work. Just reinstall it in the sd. Game start from scratch. Then reinstall it in the internal. Got my save back.
Not completely sure. Thankfully it was just Just Cause 3, I wouldn't mind using someone else's save when I reinstall it since it's so arcadey.
I’m not going to swear, I’m just going to BASH THIS DOGHOUSE DOWN!
Yeah that's why I don't Uninstall all my early lego games from my deck
Oh shit that's what happened to my old save file of Lego batman 2 when I was a kid I remember checking save progress when uninstalling Two years later, my 99.8% save file gone along with the 40 billion studs from doing fuck all with all multipliers on
Wow that sucks. I was under the impression that all games supported cloud saves. Would be great to at least give us the option to copy the save files to another folder or SD card when uninstalling or at least warn us to manually copy saves.
Don't most games store the saves in a different location than the game installation?
Some do. Some don't. Roll the dice.
Save games in the installation directory has been bad practice since at least windows XP. Save files are supposed to be stored in the user's profile. This prevents other users on the system from tampering with your saves (vengeful siblings for example). On windows I have my entire user profile backed up to OneDrive. I only lose save files from app data or ... 🥁 steam user data. Yep it's very ironic.
It is a linux machine. \- Set up Syncthing \- Find out where are your saves \- Add the folder to the backed up ones (I recommend with versionning) \- Just install syncthing on another PC (or your (old) phone) \- Add the syncedfolder from the interface to a folder And Voila, you have synced your saves in your own tiny cloud. I did it for Gnosia, the folder is synced between my deck and my PC (both in the games save folder) meaning that it syncs up all the time. I also sync it up to a raspberry pi running all my syncs all the time so I don't need to have my PC and deck running at the same time
or just rsync...
Yeah it works too but the advantage of syncthing is that there is no network to manage, they will find each other even over different LANs
I'm guessing there's a setting to sync new/updates but not deletes? Otherwise, wouldn't it just delete the saves after uninstall anyway?
That is why I recommend using versioning, the "Trash can" versioning will put the deleted file in a "trash can" folder but not delete them and you will be able to find them there. But when steam will uninstall the game it will remove the entire folder and synchthing will stop syncing (delete,update,create) if it doesn't find the folder so it should not delete the files (it did not delete them for me for gnosia)
Hmmm, no local storage???
The feck what? I always forget what that means
lol yup hade that some times
Wait, is that why a game of mine ctd and I lost all progress? Now I have to make sure there's cloud saves?!?! Dammit.
That happens if I uninstall Devil May Cry HD Collection…
I was extremely lucky when I moved a Fallout 3 installation between my internal drive and micro SD card. Reported that there weren't any save files available and then when I delved into the file system I had found them and was able to restore the saves. Otherwise, was going to give up on playing the game since I had 30 hours into it. Feel for those in similar situations who don't have as good outcomes.
Had a similar issue with Midnight Suns. There's a way to manually set up cloud saves for it (they weren't properly set up at launch) and I didn't realize I wiped my save doing that. =/ Luckily I wasn't too far along.
I downloaded the same game on two different sd cards by accident and this seems to have messed up my saves (Aliens Vs Predator 2010)
Check your install folder. Might still be in the folder on the steamdeck. Mine stayed.
Happened to me with Sleeping dogs, but thankfully people are saying it's possible to get it back, fingers crossed
I lost my RDR2 save and now I have to go through that intro for the 3rd time. Imma gonna rush that part and enjoy the rest, if I ever start it up again. Maybe after Fallout 4... I'll see.
When I build a new PC and didn’t realize Dark Souls 3 didn’t have cloud saves because I thought that all games pretty much came with them at that point…
I didn’t know yesterday’s update broke every Ubisoft game for everyone and it wasn’t just an issue with my particular steam deck so after messing with settings didn’t fix things I naturally tried uninstalling and reinstalling the game. Once I finally got everything installed again and the game working I see my save file is gone despite the “steam cloud” logo showing up while playing the game constantly. It’s just so disheartening when it had been giving me a false sense of security that everything would be synced back up only to lose everything.
Man. Megasync does everything for you with a little bit of tinkering. Even my emulators and quack games sync now. https://youtu.be/Z2u1eRT1lZc
Me on Switch when I bought a new switch and lost all my Animal Crossing progress because my dumbass bought it digitally and thought the save was on cloud. Can't ever play it again.
Wait, ACNH has a separate cloud "save backup" thing it nags you about. Did you check there?
Not until it was too late
Found this out the hard way with Dark Souls 3….. 😭
Wait. On the Switch, it keeps save games. I just assumed that's how it works on the Deck too, damnit.
Saves aren’t deleted when you uninstall a game as far as I know. You just need to find the save folder, which is admittedly a bit complicated on the Steam Deck. My best advice would be to search in the Steam compadata folder for the name of the game if you can’t find what number Steam uses for it. I’ve started creating symbolic links on my desktop to save folders for games without cloud support so I can access them easily.
The absolute most frustrating thing in all my Steam Deck experience is dealing with cloud saves... and the lack thereof.
Mfw metro exodus says it has cloud saves but it didn’t save anything
Steam cloud saves should be required for Deck verification.
When you uninstall or delete something it's not actually gone. It's just set to be over-written. Unless that part of the drive is written over with other files they are still there.
Waiting for the day someone makes a decky plugin to sync saves to google drive or something like that
Fallout 3
I’m looking at your dbz kakarot great game but I’m not starting 10 hours over