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GameSave Manager?
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Yup; although, it never was up to Valve if games supported Steam Cloud, was it?
Also, /u/DelvingDeeper, you could try using GameSave-Manager if you're on Windows; and PCGamingWiki can help fill in some of the games that don't support Steam Cloud.
> I end up losing game saves because you can never tell where the fucking devs put the damn things.
You might want to have a look at GameSave Manager. It'll take care of migration, for sure. Plus, it's free (and portable, too)!
Edit: A huge thanks and warm feels to /u/ravstar52 for the gold! I don't deserve it at all, though I am incredibly grateful still. :-)
Also, I realize that I'm late to reply, but I'd like to take a moment to plug the PC Gaming Wiki, which has information on where various games store their data, and plenty of other things, like how to run older games on a modern PC. GameSave Manager can do a lot, and it's wonderful software, but PCGW's database of game fixes and tweaks has saved my gaming life many times too, and I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend it to you all (and to you, future Google searcher).
There's actually software that does this for Windows called GameSave Manager. It finds what save folders you have and will move the folder to Dropbox, Google Drive, or Skydrive, then make symbolic links to their original location. If for whatever reason the program doesn't recognize a game, you can add a custom entry or just manually do the symbolic linking.
Ninja edit: that shell extension is pretty neat, though.
This really grinds my gears, all the developers need to do is call the SHGetKnownFolderPath function with FOLDERID_SavedGames as the first parameter and bam, you get the path to the Saved Games folder on windows vista/7/8! Not only that, but just like every other special folder (My Documents included) you can right click it and go to properties and easily change its location to anywhere you want on your hdd including "My Documents\My Games" if that's what you want for some insane reason.
Instead games have taken over my documents to the point that it's unusable for it's intended function as a place to put USER CREATED AND EDITABLE DOCUMENTS! As anything you put there is drown in the hundreds of game created folders and files.
And no people, sticking the saves on the game directory is not okay, nobody wants to go trough every game directory and figure out what files are the ones you need to backup to copy your saves over another computer or be forced to use specific software to manage it easily, I also don't want to launch a game as administrator so it can subvert OS protections and write inside Program Files folder or have my saves overwritten when another user on the computer logs in and starts playing, that kind of thinking goes against every proper multiuser practice to the point that NOT EVEN CONSOLES ALLOW IT these days.
So yeah, for me it should be mandatory to used "Saved Games/<game_name>" special folder on windows and equivalent sensible directories on other operation systems (probably "~/Library/Application Support/Games/<game_name>" on OSX and "$XDG_DATA_HOME/games/<game_name>" on linux).
/rant off
As for the age check goes they updated it a while back so it remembers the date you put in, so now you just have to hit the button and you're done.
I can see the message thing changing in the future since the mobile app works like that.
My main criticism for a while had been the jumbling of the copious amounts of DLC mixed in with the New Releases, but that has been recently changed. For now I still dislike the way the games are listed, meaning if you scroll down to "70-80" games and click on then go back to the list you're back to 1-10 on the list.
Oh and it'd be nice to be able to add custom icons for non-steam games. They show up fugly as sin in the grid view with a small crappy icon amongst beautiful high-res 16:9 icons.
edit: The main complaint seems to be on choosing location of installing games. Now for myself that's not much of an issue since I've given Steam it's own partition (works wonders with reinstalling an OS), but for those that want an intermediary solution:
I've not use Steam mover, but I use Game Save Manager quite frequently, though not for moving Steam games just...well managing my game saves :P. Both are worth a shot, and theoretically can be used for most other things beyond games too (essentially they're making junctions)
I recommend everyone check out Gamesave Manager which backs up your steam (and non-steam) gamesaves to the folder or cloud service of your choice.
This program has saved me lots of hassle.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ it scours your PC for all save games then creates a single file you can move to your new windows install. Then reinstall the program, open the .gsm file in game save manager and bam, it restores all those saves that were hidden in appdata and elsewhere on your PC.
GameSave Manager is essential.
SteamMover is very helpful for easily moving games to your SSD and keeping track of all the symlinks. Yes you can do this in Steam directly now, but I still find this easier.
IdleMaster. I got all my Steam trading cards in a day and I didn't even have to install the games to get them. Amazing.
There seems to be no established 'norm' in this regard. I've seen saves put all over the place including AppData, LocalAppData, UserProfile, and AllUsersProfile/ProgramData. This is why Steam Cloud saving is nice, and why tools like GameSave Manager exist to fill in the gaps.
The walking dead does not support cloud saves.
The game needs to support cloud saving in order for this to work.
In the future you may want to look into a free application called GameSave Manager that can do a bunch of crazy awesome stuff syncing & backing up save files (especially dropbox)
You can easily see if a game supports cloud saving by looking for the "Cloud Saving" icon listed next to other things like Single Player, Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer, Controller Support, etc. on the game's steam store page.
For non-steam games and those that do not make use of the cloud features, I use GameSave manager. I have it installed on a beefy pendrive so I can backup/restore automatically with a few clicks.
I haven't had the best of luck with the 'rogue' genre of games, but this one I can get behind.
It's an enjoyable platformer - and while your characters have permadeath you keep all the weapon upgrades/castle upgrades. Progress in the castle saves as well assuming you beat the boss of the area you are in.
My only warning is the game does not cloud save, so if you are planning on moving computers in the future or have had your ass burned before on losing a game save, make sure you backup the saves of this game. I find the GameSaveManager program to be super helpful, just have it put all my saves in my dropbox/onedrive/drive folder and I am good to go.
Damn dude for the future check out Gamesave Manager. It scans your drive and lets you quickly make backups of your saves for almost any game which you can store somewhere else to restore later. I used this when I needed to clean install 8.1 and it was a huge time saver.
And that's your problem, using words like "Mandatory", "Should", "Must" and alike. You sound like either you or anyone has the Authority to do so where like Universe it's complete Entropy (Chaos). Try to refrain your OCD tendencies.
Also with most modern games, game save locations do not matter anymore since most of them using "Cloud Saves" making local saves irrelevant unless you're patching, hacking or else with your game saves. Utilites like Cloud Manager or GameSave Manager can provide you centralized interface for your saves.
While can agree to the point Why don't they *embrace* a Common Save Location idea, instead of ranting or ordering here, maybe you can convince each developer you see doing otherwise by posting at their "Official" forums starting with Steam. Because when a good idea/plea is presented and backed up by the community, most developers are good to listen so
You seem like from generation of where your common game saves are to Documents whereas I'm from a generation where every game gotta keep their files within their own directory which was usually outside of Program Files. So it doesn't bother all like you especially with Cloud saves intact.
As an achievement hunter, I like to backup saves (where possible) when I uninstall a game, just in case anyone wants to see proof (beyond the screenshots I take).
I discovered that some devs will choose to not put save data into a save file at all... they will actually put it DIRECTLY. INTO. THE. REGISTRY.
"What the fuck are you doing?!" is what I said when I found this out.
At that point, I got GSM and have been using that ever since. The downside is that it isn't aware of certain games (too new or not popular enough) but it's updated regularly. Pulls everything it can into one simple ZIP file, saved where ever you want. It'll also backup Steam settings and screenshots.
GameSave Manager is just about the best thing in PC gaming in ages. It lets you export all your game saves to another directory, an archive, or to cloud storage (Dropbox, Box.net, SkyDrive, etc), you can symlink your gamesave directories so that they go directly to your cloud storage folder, so that they get backed up anytime anything changes, it can run on a set schedule, has a Steam spreader function to rehome Steam games from one drive to another, all kinds of stuff.
Seriously, it's free, and no PC gamer should be living without it or relying on Steam, Uplay, or Origin for their saves.
TF2 will remember. Not sure for Cuphead, but if it doesn't save the savegame files in the cloud, you can use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ to backup them to USB and restore later. Just remember to log in with the same steam account on the new laptop.
Mmmmm I love me the Steam Cloud. One thing to remember though is that it doesn't support all games on steam. For those I like to use this nifty tool called GameSave Manager. It can backup and restore most any game save, and it's free!
Sounds like you need Steam Mover but anything that would use NTFS junctions would work to do the bare minimum.
For a more complete answer, GameSave Manager (go with version 3.0.238.0) has the capability for it as well as backing up your game saves and being able to restore them to default locations.
The idea is that it moves the data to a new location and you use something called a NTFS junction that links the file from the new location to the old location. As far as Windows is concerned, nothing's changed.
Get Game Save Manager. It will automatically find all the save files for any games you have and with the click of a single button create all the symbolic links for you and move all your save files into a single directory in your dropbox folder.
Install it on another PC and at the click of another single button (re-link) it will take all the save games in your dropbox folder and put them into the save file locations for each game and create the symlinks.
No there isn't. GOG has got no equivalent of Steam Cloud. You have to rely on manually backing up and transferring save games. Furthermore, be aware that some games use different save formats in their different ports and might not transfer across platforms.
The closest thing to a helper for that would be GameSave Manager, it assists backing up and restoring game saves in batch but it works only on Windows.
Alternatively, you can try mapping your save game folders to a cloud sync service like Dropbox, but you'd need to do that for every game on your own. (You can combine GameSave Manager and Dropbox to automatize this, though)
> then set a symbolic link in my documents.
Not even necessary, just go to the properties setting* of Documents and change the drive letter, and it should move everything.
There are too many games that create individual folders in the Documents folder, that don't use the "My Games" folder, to create symbolic links every time.
There are also save game managers, like this: http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
It won't get everything, but a great many games will be grabbed automatically if you use Gamesave Manager.
Looking at the filepaths it was backing up is actually what got me to making this topic.
The games that support Steam Cloud will, but those that don't will not. Steam tells which games support it on their Store page, but you can also switch to list view in your Library and if a game supports Steam Cloud it will show a cloud icon next to the left of the Status. Never knew that until someone mentioned it a few months ago on here, lol.
For games that don't you can look them up on PCGamingWiki and it should tell you where their save file is located so you can manually back it up. There is also a tool which can help with this called GameSaveManager; never tried it yet personally, but has been recommended by a few other people when someone asks about saves and the Steam Cloud.
Actually, you can backup multiple games at once. It will give you a list with checkboxes for the games that you want to back up. When restoring, you can also choose which games to restore from the backup file.
Now Steam have cloud saves, but in case your games doesn't have that feature enabled, I recommend GameSave Manager to back those saves up.
if your HDD is dying, turn off and only use it when you have something to backup onto. the longer you use it the less chance you have of backing up your data.
Just back up the files you really want to save, these are the most important files that you can not replace. Pictures, video's documents.
Then move onto save files for games. Gamesave Manager is pretty good for this.
After that, anything you get is an extra.
Edit_
If you have fast internet, you can use something like Mega (just google it) to backup online, they give 50GB free. If you have nothing to backup to then this should at least be something.
Don't forget to backup your favourites/bookmarks in browsers. A lot of people forget those.
No point copying over program files, these will be useless. Only actual program exe files or files you use to install if you want to keep those.
Your probably going to need to reinstall windows on a new HDD. So if you don't have the licence key of your current install, try 'Magic Jelly Bean Key Finder' and write it down.
Not all game support steam cloud and some games dont backup everything. Civ5 has 'cloud specific' save files. Anything local is not backed up.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
If you're migrating computers use this tool. Its well established well supported and free tool that almost everyone uses. This thing backups up everything and anythign game releated no matter where it hides its files
Games litter their saves all around your computer, there is no single folder you can copy to keep that stuff. So.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
- It's a free backup utility for saved games. It uses a really wide catalog of games to find everything for backing it up to a neat archive.
My past experiences:
It actually had backed up my steam screenshots that i accidentally deleted.
I had to use manually renamed profiles to to replay RE6 with different people, the manager even backed up all the other profiles that had messed up file-extensions.
It even found emulator saves.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
One stop shopping for all your save game needs. While yes some games have Steam cloud others dont or are saved in ultra esoteric locations.
This tool is vetted and is basically the gold standard for save game migrations.
If the games are thru Steam, you can just transfer your entire steamapps directory to the new computer after you install Steam to it. To transfer your saved games, you can use GameSave Manager.
If the games aren't thru Steam, you'll probably have to reinstall each game manually.
Try GameSave Manager. It can find and backup all your save games. It also has a "sync and link" feature (I've never used it) which can apparently sync savegames via dropbox and link them to the folder they should be in. Overall it's been pretty fantastic for me.
Unfortunate that you're being downvoted for wanting standards, however, your analogy may be a bit off. In any case, if you need to backup your save files and have trouble, you can check PCGamingWiki for the location or use GameSave-Manager.
That's not a trick, it is an actual software
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
You can quite easily set it to scan your memory daily for changed saves and keep the last, say, five revisions. I personally have it place the backups into my MEGA sync folder, because with enough saves, the folder gets a bit heavy.
I usually just copy the steamapps folder over to the new hard drive, or if you are just going to use the old hard drive in the new machine, just install steam and point it to the old location. It should pick up everything fine.
For save games, I've used http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ and backup all my saves to Google Drive. Then re-import on the new box.
Only if you format your PC, your GTAV savegames are in your My Documents\Rockstar Games\GTA V folder, backup this folder to be safe, if you ever forget to do it, you'll loose every progress, best way to avoid this, use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ and link your saves to a dropbox or any cloud storage service of your choice using their sync and link from the Gamesave Manager thingy, peace of mind after that.
That totally sucks. For the future, http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ is cool. I also use Razer Cortex (used to be game booster) purely for it's cloud save feature. It allows you to back up your saves to a dropbox account and will re-download them for you
I suggest using Game Save Manager, it backs up your saved game files which you can then restore once you've reinstalled Windows. It's constantly updated with the latest games and contains a tool that can shift your Steam games from one drive to another. No adware or spyware or anything.
- Steam games from the last several years should support cloud sync. Confirm whether a game has this on the game's store page, by looking at the right sidebar which contains information like "Singleplayer", "Multiplayer", etc. Look for "Steam Cloud".
- GoG has their own game client, which also supports game sync I believe.
- Use a game save manager, and backup the managed files to another hard drive or to the cloud (eg. Google Drive): http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
Here's how to do it:
Click the "Install" button. A window should pop up.
It should tell you if the USB drive has enough free space for the game you want to play. 4GB is fairly small, it's only enough for small Indie titles and older games. Also keep in mind that this is most likely a USB 2.0 drive, which means that it will be significantly slower than a hard drive, resulting in long loading times (depending on the complexity of the game).
At the bottom, there's "Choose location for install." Click on the downward facing triangular arrow at the far right, next to "Install under ..." and select "Create new Steam library on drive ...". Select the drive letter that corresponds with your USB drive and then wait until the installation has finished. If the USB drive does not appear in the list (which is likely), close the install window and go to "Steam" (top left corner") -> "Settings" -> "Downloads" -> "Steam Library Folders" -> "Add Library Folder". Navigate to the USB drive, create a new folder and select it. Close the settings window, continue with the steps above and select the newly created folder, wait until the download has finished.
Plug the USB drive into the other PC and then once more go the settings menu and select the folder on the USB drive that you've just created. Steam should automatically recognize it and after a restart of Steam, the game (as well as any other game in the folder) should be playable without any additional downloads.
Note that some games on Steam have additional copy protection mechanisms, which often prohibit this kind of moving between computers. Also make sure that the game is either saving its save games in its folder in the Steam library or has a "Steam Cloud" icon on its store page (right hand side), indicating that it'll sync its save games online. Otherwise you may have to resort to either manually backing up save games or using a tool like this one.
Steam -> Settings/Preferences -> Interface; make sure "Start Steam in Big Picture mode" is not checked.
If you're running Steam from a shortcut make sure you're not using the command-line arguments -480p, -720p, -windowed, -fulldesktopres, -tenfoot, or -bigpicture.
If it continues after making sure all of that is not enabled, you could try adding the command-line argument -nobigpicture. This will disable BP when starting Steam.
And if it continues after all of that, maybe try reinstalling Steam. GameSave-Manager can help make sure you don't lose game saves if you're on Windows, but won't get everything as it simply doesn't know about everything. PCGamingWiki will have the location of most game save files, but again not all. Also, not all games that claim to support Steam Cloud actually support it (won't synch the files because the devs didn't tell Steam where they are in the app configuration), so you should include those in your backup/restore procedure.
Most of Steam Data of an user is kept on Steam Servers (like) but "per client" settings are stored locally which needs backup but those settings are not essential tweaks. Also family sharing settings are local again.
If you are using Windows 8/10 built-in reset is better than format/reinstall timewise. All game data (except saves) are kept in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps and if you move/restore that folder, Steam would not download but verify+play the games. For saves, if a game support "Steam Cloud" it is on Servers but for local save games you can use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ to backup/restore.
You can also try to keep whole C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam as it will be functional up to some degree but reinstall of Steam Client + moving back the games (steamapps) is more advised as it will clear all unknown sources of error with "fresh" install.
And do "not use" the Steam built-in backup function as it is both buggy and time consuming compared to simple copy paste back and forth.
What are you saying? Castle Crashers has Steam Cloud Save where your save should have been uploaded unless Steam was offline at the time.
Try to start fresh installation with no save games so that Cloud will sync back to local copy (unless overwritten or out of sync). Also https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite/ can help you depending on which steps you did so far.
For non-Cloud saves, use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ in the future and yes Steam Backup sux even without missing save feature where manual copy-paste is better.
For games that don't use Steam Cloud for saves I find http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ does a fine job at backing up saves as some go to the C drive even when installed to a secondary HDD.
When the new OS is installed just run that again but restore what it put out the first time.
Game saves can go in a lot of different locations. You can always try GameSave Manager to save game saves into the cloud. I do it's job by hand using symbolic links on Windows. I'm not bothered about the game saves too much, so they get placed onto Dropbox and are synced over using that.
For backing up the Steam games, you can follow the backup and restore thing built into steam. This does become tedious when you have a lot of games to go through though.
you can use GameSave Manager to find all the save files and copy to dropbox or somewhere else. Only some games have cloud save (list view shows the cloud icon), some games uses My Games folder in Documents and some use remote folder in Steam.
you can read more about it here: http://www.howtogeek.com/167857/4-ways-to-back-up-your-pc-game-saves/
> I learned this the hard way... you CANNOT transfer save files across to another PC, hell, you can't move them with you across a reinstall.
May I introduce you to GameSave Manager?
Many Steam games have online save synchronization. You can see if a game has it if there is a cloud icon in Steams "List View".
If you want to make sure to move everything over you should check out Gamesave Manager. It can backup and restore the save files of nearly every game.
If you hate yourself and want to back up each game manually <ou could use PCGamingWiki to look up where the savefiles are for each game.
Game-Save Manager: free app that finds all your game files and backs them up (including ds2). It also has dropbox support--so everywhere you go, so do your saved games! You can set it to automatically backup several iterations of each game file, and to automatically detect new games when they're installed. It's FANTASTIC and saved me from some serious heartbreak when my pc crashed. http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
No not many games save to steam cloud. Even some games with steam cloud features don't save games to the cloud.
You should manually backup the saves. You could look at programs like http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
It's a separate program. You can set it up to have automatic cloud saving between Dropbox, Google Drive, and a couple of other services, and it has support for over four-thousand games.
I had some trouble with the auto-cloud feature earlier, but it's pretty easy to scan your system for supported games and set manual backups.
I recommend GameSave Manager (it's free). You can have it automatically backup everything regularly or with a shortcut on your desktop or even have it synchronize the folder with somewhere else. It backups to Dropbox or to another hard drive. It recognizes most games and for SimCity 4 it doesn't just backup cities but also mods.
Depends. The Steam games can contain save files which will be lost if you don't back it up as not all games use the Steam Cloud. However, it should be noted that not all Steam games use their respective directories to store your save data, so backing up game saves via backing up Steam does not always work. Personally, I recommend installing GameSave Manager. This program is not only free, but will search your computer for all the proper store locations of your games and create backup archives of them. It can even be used as a scheduled task. I highly recommend it if you are serious about backing up game save data.
As for the games themselves, yes, you are correct that you can redownload it again. But some people have monthly data limits on their internet and others just don't want to take the time to redownload.
To add to what others are saying, GameSave Manager has an easy-to-use symbolic link tool built-in for precisely this purpose, on top its other handy features. It's called sync-and-link in GSM, but it uses symbolic links to do the job.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ > Ever had to format your system? > > Perhaps you have been victim of file corruption which also victimised your gamesaves? > Maybe you just wish to transfer your gamesave(s) to your new machine, or to take with you to a friend's? > > With GameSave Manager, you can easily backup, restore and transfer your gamesave(s). > No longer do you need to manually track through all of the those different directories to backup/restore/transfer your gamesaves, making it great for those who like to share gamesave progress with friends/family, format frequently, paranoid about data loss, etc.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ That's one I use. It auto-detects every save file you have from UPlay/Origin/Steam and quite a few DRM Free/Disc based ones and allows you to back them up into one file and the program will let you recover them if you ever need to.
On the sale page of the game look for steam cloud. Games with steam cloud you will see synching every time you quit the game. Every game without steam cloud you need to backup the saves for. An alternative is a program called game save manager.
Check out free GameSave Manager software for Windows.
>Ever had to format your system? > >Perhaps you have been victim of file corruption which also victimised your gamesaves? Maybe you just wish to transfer your gamesave(s) to your new machine, or to take with you to a friend's? > >With GameSave Manager, you can easily backup, restore and transfer your gamesave(s). No longer do you need to manually track through all of the those different directories to backup/restore/transfer your gamesaves, making it great for those who like to share gamesave progress with friends/family, format frequently, paranoid about data loss, etc.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
You can run it automatically and/or schedule it to run as a task in Windows. I have it run once a day to a folder that syncs to Dropbox. Of course this only helps depending on how frequently you back up.
Optionally you could make it so your Borderlands 2 folder resides somewhere that software like Dropbox syncs as it keeps prior versions online.
Generally you don't want to download from the cloud though as your local machine tends to have the latest. Sounds like it was accidental for you though.
While it doesn't do anything to address all the ridiculous locations that developers put the game saves (i.e.: the clutter will still be there) but I have found this software called GameSave Manager that uses a database to check for game saves. It seems to get updated at least once a week and I don't really worry about losing a game save anymore.
But the one feature beyond simply backing up is the ability it has to 'Sync & Link' as they call it. Basically, it uses the same previously mentioned database and instead of just backing up the files, it will move the gamesave data to another location and symlink back to the original.
That way the data is where you want, the game thinks it's where it wants it and everyone is happy.
And it's all somehow free.
Game Save Manager is a great bit of software that will automatically move a large number of game save files to your dropbox folder. It uses NTFS junctions so that as far as the game is concerned they're in the normal spots.
GameSave Manager (GSM) for your needs.
The problem with GfWL saves is that you also need to backup your GfWL profile. IIRC, though, even without it, it still possible to restore saves with a laborious workaround.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
Should sort you out, and if you have Dropbox (you should, it's handy) it can sync them there and you'll never lose your files. It can be set to be automated n such too. Pretty handy for filling in where Steam Cloud doesn't. Oh and it should also be able to put your save files back where they belong too when you're on your fresh install.
I've had issues with it before with another game entirely, Torchlight 1 in this case. Apparently with certain mods installed, if you fail to keep them installed when you play the game next, your game will crash as soon as the initial load finishes. Back when I was having issues, Steam would helpfully restore the saves I'd delete from Windows and there was no way to delete them in-game, so I'd have to start the game, minimize it and then delete the saves after Steam Cloud did its check.
I don't think it's anywhere near as convoluted now but I still have it turned off just because.
I don't know if GameSave Manager has support for FF3, but I've been using this for a good while. Just after I had a hard drive crash instead of before. It has a cloud saving option too but I don't use it either, instead making manual backups to the cloud instead of having it manage them automatically. It works out pretty well in my experience.
Not someone who voted, but I use Game Save Manager to cover my saves, granted I use it no matter what as I've disabled Steam's Cloud Saving due to having issues with it in a few cases. But I also don't utilize GSM's automatic backup because I've had issues with that too!
Games that don't support Steam Cloud usually store save data in [user]/game saves, [user]/my documents/games (or a similarly titled folder), and sometimes [user]/appdata/roaming and [user]/appdata/local. Some of these folders are hidden by default. If the the game uses the developer's name instead of product title it makes them a little more difficult to spot. I believe game settings are also saved in the same location the game uses for game saves. I don't think they use the game's directory within the SteamApps folder because it would cause issues when validating the game's content. This Support article as well as this one go over some of the save locations.
Using GameSave Manager to backup save data is the simplest solution.
This is what you really need first, it will find all your save game files and you can back them up, you can use the same program to restore them to the correct locations. You need something like this because unfortunately games save all over the place.
Note that some games may not save, no matter what you do, i've had this happen with the Truck Simulator series of games.
Now for backups. It's good to keep more than 1 copy, as it rules out a lot of things like backup HDD failure or loss in the event of physical damage or fire.
1 backup on an external drive should usually be more then enough. If you want to be 100% sure that your date/files are as safe as possible, this is what i would do.
1 external HDD for backups, this would go offline (unplug and store) after a backup.
1 external HDD would be a copy of the backups, these would go to a trusted friend/family member, files would be password protected (with something like 7-zip or Winrar) and backups taken occasionally.
Another would be online backup.
This way you have multiple bases covered.
ye... steam is handles em automatically 'only if' it's coded right by the game maker. steam syncs local save files with cloud "at the end" of your gaming session and keep track of timestamps of both local and server copies. if they don't match, steam prompts a dialog box asking which copy u'd like to keep with their mismatch timestamps but dis is a rare occasion. steam cloud is pretty good but ur always advised to keep ur local copy backup if ur progress is too important with tools like http://www.gamesave-manager.com/.
Even with manual removal of Steam Cloud Saves , there should be traces left for Recuva to find on your hard drive. Unless the said drive was free space cleaned, and or other files are already written on top of them.
IDK sounds weird. No one else uses your computer? You've not reformatted windows since 2015 and maybe just forgot to back up or restore your saves? Even with Steam Cloud on, http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ might be a good idea.
GameSave Manager used to work perfectly for me. Not sure about the state it's in now though since I've not used it for quite some time.
I'm guessing it should be good for the previously compatible games and local saves at least.
For games on Steam the achievement data is stored on the server, and so it shouldn't be lost in any case. Other platforms or games with no platform (just an installation disc or download) IDK though.
You can attempt to find which games do and don't support Steam Cloud by switching the client to List View mode in the Library and enabling the Cloud column (little + by the list view mode in the default client skin). This is not 100% effective though as some games have a partially-defined Steam Cloud setup that prevents Steam from synching them because the developers didn't include the location(s) of the data file(s)...lol.
If you're on Windows GameSave-Manager can help with some of the work, but doesn't know the location of every save.
PCGamingWiki often (but not always) has the save data location for games, but some are missing entries, especially for Mac and Linux (though they do have a lot of them).
Most games will allow backup/restore, but any could potentially have an issue with it, so make sure to keep a copy of the backup when restoring them just in case.
Also, for games that do support Steam Cloud -- if you're not going to make a backup -- make sure the data is synchronized. Steam seems to do this when an app is started or closed, but if there is a connectivity error then it will not synch and instead will wait until next time the app is launched. This can cause the "Steam Cloud Conflict" dialog to popup asking you to upload to the Steam Cloud or download from it or Cancel, at which point you can try to tell which save file is newer based on a timestamp that is displayed, but you can test the game in offline mode [if possible to play it in offline mode] to see if the current save data is correct before making a decision.
If a game supports Steam Cloud then the Steam client will, on startup and shutdown of the app, attempt to synchronize data or ensure that it is already synched; connectivity issues, Steam crashing, and etc can cause problems with that and as qaisjp said not all games do support Steam Cloud (even though it's pretty simple to do so).
I gave a more basic explanation [of my understanding] of Steam Cloud yesterday here which also includes information about how to find the save yourself whether or not it's using Steam Cloud, and more.
Along to that I would like to now add: GameSave-Manager - A Windows-only program to help backup/restore/keep save data synchronized across machines.
In this case I'd suggest finding the location of the save data and manually confirming it exists. If it does not:
Are you 100% sure that you saved before exiting?
Did you wait for the game to tell you it finished saving before exiting? If not it may have not finished writing the file data and created a corrupt file which it then destroyed on startup when trying to parse your save data.
As hotizard said Steam Cloud support would need to be added by the devs because they would need to log into the game-administrator part of Steam and change some values for that game to turn on Steam Cloud and let Steam itself know where the client can find the files it should synchronize. Valve won't do this for a third party product for any reason, AFAIK, though they probably could.
If your on Windows GameSave-Manager that hotizard mentioned should be able to help you keep your saves safe, but Mac doesn't really have any options [yet] and Linux doesn't seem to have many (I saw one) according to the AlternativeTo page for GameSave-Manager.
If you're playing on a Mac or Linux system, or you've got some games which aren't supported by GSM or just don't want to use it, you can try to find the game save locations on PCGamingWiki and manually handle synchronization (backup/restore). There may be some games which just aren't on PCGW yet (too old/new), but considering it's got listings for DOS/ScummVM and etc other ollllld school games it's probably not all too many.
You might want to try GameSave Manager. It periodically backs up the save files of all your games and uploads them to a cloud storage platform of your choice (or just stores them on another hard drive).
In addition to TechNolz's good comment, you can use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ for games that do not use Cloud feature and transfer manually. Or use http://savelocations.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Games with Dropbox like of external cloud to achieve same effect.
I don't know what you are talking about but assuming "backup" functionality of Steam which most of Steam users do not use.
In future, try to backup/restore your save games either via:
* Steam Cloud if available for the game + https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite
* http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
* http://savelocations.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Games
Steam Cloud is keeping the freshest file between the two (PC and Laptop) while asking to overwrite the older file with the fresh copy (so means losing local copy). There is only one that can be stored in cloud so it is your decision.
If you want to keep both saves then you have to disable one or two of cloud sync features for the game through Game -> Properties -> Updates -> Untick 'Enable Cloud Sync...".
Also be sure to backup both local game saves with http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ in case of unexpected results.
You can tell which games support Steam Cloud by going into the client and switching to "List View" mode. In this mode it will show a cloud symbol for the games that do support Steam Cloud to the left of the Status column. As FuzzyPuffin already said though One Finger Death Punch doesn't support it unfortunately.
For any games which don't support Steam Cloud you can move them between machines manually, or use something like Dropbox (if you're installing games to different locations or have 32-bit Windows on one machine and 64-bit on another this may not work well depending on the location save data is stored). You could also try using GameSave-Manager, a program meant to help with synchronizing game saves across machines where Steam Cloud isn't supported.
If you have issues when trying to move/replace a game save you can check out this guide on the old steampowered.com forums about how to delete files from the Steam Cloud, specifically the bit about the "Cloud Sync Conflict" dialog; of course this guide in particular only applies to games which actually support Steam Cloud integration though, but there could be problems with Dropbox or some other synchronization program and this could relate.
>How do I transfer save data from Just Cause 3 onto a different computer?
copy / paste, USB Flash HDD, Home Networking file transfer, burnt to a CD, Cloud Storage, OneDrive, GoogleDrive, Box ect. http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
>First, how do I backup my data just in case I screw up while transferring/copying the files?
copy / paste them somewhere else, zip them, http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
>And what would I do if I did indeed screw with my data, how would I restore the backup data?
copy / paste them back, unzip them back, http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
>And of course once I get the save data where should I put it into my steam folder on my other computer?
In the same place on the other computer where you took it from.
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Square Enix\Just Cause 3\Saves<user-id>\
for that game, saves are not saved in the Steam folder, it is in your Documents folder.
yep, guide says keep Steam userdata folder too! screen shots other Steam library .vdf info settings.
And not all game saves are Steam cloud backed up, or stored in users My Documents. http://www.gamesave-manager.com/?s=download back them up if he has anything important to keep.
A clean install of Windows 10 would be better than an over install of current Windows 7 as an upgrade.
If your game supports Family Share, this might be easier.
Create a new alternate Steam Account, Family Share it with your main. This should result in one installation, and two different user saves.
You might also have to create a new Windows User login (assumes you use Windows) to run the alternate Steam account on it to get some games to save properly (My Documents or Apptdata) depending on the game/s.
see the problem with what you want to do is it is still under your one username, both saves will try and go to the same places, and if a game is Steam Clouded, well it may just cloud your latest saves back.
edit: also get new achievements ^ on alt account.
Thinking about it some more. On one Steam Account, I guess you could try and use http://www.gamesave-manager.com to back up and restore for multiple game saves start over? But that is not going to deal with your achievements or Steam Cloud, that were already unlocked if you want them to drop again, a Family Shared account will.
In the Steam Client, if you switch to the second view mode, there's a column that explicitly tells you which games have cloud support and which don't. Neither of the Baldur's Gate games have it. There's tools out there, like GameSave Manager, which let you set up cloud support for instances like this.
i use this: http://www.gamesave-manager.com/?s=download for regular game save backup since i dont use cloud save on Steam and it can also manage custom save game locations.
for migrating from your old HDD, ubi-cain's solution is easier, for Steam.
Ouch; sorry. Totally forgot about that =\
You could try creating an empty folder and moving the game install data from the current Steam\steamapps\common folder(s) over to the new one. If you leave the manifests behind and then go and "Install" each game it should properly move them and update any that need it; there will be a delay as it "discovers existing files" after downloading a new copy of the manifest, but it shouldn't be nearly as long as a fresh download or even verifying the cache.
You could move the appmanifests too and it will make Steam think many of the games are properly installed, and they are, but some games won't like this and you'll have to verify their cache or use another trick to fix them.
Well worth noting that some people, for some reason, have problems with this and prefer to instead use Steam's own "Backup/restore" feature (right click in Library then click "Backup game files"; not sure how to restore because I've never done it this way).
Also: Some games don't support Steam Cloud synch and you will not have your game save if you don't move them too. The Steam\uesrdata folder often has some, but some games like to save to an external folder. You can look up the locations to manually transfer them on PCGamingWiki, or try GameSave Manager or an alternative to it; I'm not sure if any of these programs work as I've not tested them, but GSM has been mentioned here on /r/Steam a few times before by others who are/were users.
@ NotSoRandomBear
Any game with Steam User Cloud will show like this on the left hand side. https://steamdb.info/app/105600/ufs/
If you want to download / delete those saved cloud .dat you can with (mainly for achievements on some games)
https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite/releases
You want to back up / restore your own game saves on your PC try.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/?s=download (can use your own cloud, OneDrive Google Drive etc.)
You can use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/. Also if manually check your Documents and other profile folders. You can also copy-paste C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common to avoid most game re-downloads. But do not copy the main Steam folder since you said your rig is messed up which may include Steam installation.
After Assassins Creed, the pirate one, shit on my saves due to stupid fucking cloud save "feature" (yes I'm still bitter) I use http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ for everything. I have way too much space given over to save files from automatic incremental backups of save folders as I play. I set it up whenever I install a game, and then forget it's there until something like that happens. And then I only lost 20 mins tops.
Make sure to backup your save files like http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ or manually just in case.
Go C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common (or where yours reside) and rename the FO3 folder to anything else. Then remove the game from Steam Client which will only delete its settings etc. within Steam since you renamed the folder. After that, rename FO3 folder back to its original name and install game again on Steam so that Steam will only verify the existing files without re-download. When you start the game, it will invoke prerequisites installation again.
It does indeed sound like the drive is starting to fail. Unfortunately hdd failures are very common especially for seagate drives, (which Alphas come with).
Now your drive might be usable for months or even years in it's current state. Or it might pack in sooner than that.
As others have recommended this is probably the push you need to get an ssd. I know you say you currently don't have the budget for it, but if this drive dies you're gonna be without a functioning alpha. 120GB ssds are as cheap as £30 these days, so any budget can accommodate. You can always get a 120gb ssd now and upgrade it to a 500gb or 1tb ssd in the future when you have more money.
Or you can just keep using your current drive and wait until it finally packs up entirely. Just make sure you setup an auto backup every few hours or every day so you don't lose anything important. As it's a gaming device you can always reinstall games and such on the next drive so you wont lose much.
Steam has Cloud sync for some games, but many games do not sync game saves online (I learned this the hard way) so use Gamesave-manager so schedule backups to a usb stick or network share so you always have your game saves safe.
Once the drive fails, you'll hopefully be in a better place to spend that £30 on a 120GB ssd and then you just redownload your steam games and copy the game save backups back over.
You can also use Gamesave Manager: http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
Just download it on your old computer, start and backup your save games (it backups all game saves if you want to, not just Witcher). Then just move the backup files created by it to an USB drive, external harddrive, dropbox or somethig.
Afterwards just install Gamesave Manager on your new PC, click on restore/import, choose the files that got backuped and press on "start" - done. It's a beautiful, very helpful program.
Hope I could help. Another method would be to just do it manually, the save games are in your documents like mentioned in another answer here.
Hmm. Best I can come up with is an actual reinstall of Steam. You'd want a backup of the game installs (from Steam/steamapps/common), and the appmanifest's (from Steam/steamapps), and any games that don't support Steam cloud save (there's tools for this like http://www.gamesave-manager.com/).
Most games won't remove their saved games when uninstalled, if the game even has custom uninstall actions to begin with (mostly Steam will just remove the game folder and leave the stuff the game sticks in your AppData alone).
But still, it's always a good idea to keep backups around.
I just up and make a copy of my entire Windows profile folder and that grabs 99.99% of games that don't save into their game folder or Steam cloud. But for something more targeted GameSave Manager seems like a good tool, just be sure to go through the list of stuff it finds because it tends to want to backup a bunch of stuff you won't care about that may total in the GB range when your save games themselves only total MBs.
There's steam cloud on this game unless you disabled that like I do, I prefer to use a free tool at http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ and the sync and link utility in it to save my games on a dropbox drive.
Here's my savegame, I'm at around 16hrs of gameplay but I love to liberate the provinces, I've done some missions but not a lot.
Yeah, BNGI/FROM not enabling cloud saves is criminal.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
You may be able to recover the old files even after a format with recovery software.
What's funny is that FROM almost certainly has a copy of your saves that they uploaded to scan for cheating, but good luck getting it out of them.
If the game has Steam Cloud it'll transfer
Otherwise you should find out which games you want to play and transfer the save games manually. If you're not sure there's a utility that handles a lot of games
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
Its quite popular
GameSaveManager is also pretty great. Backup all of your saves and upload them to a flash drive/external hard drive or better yet, the cloud. Never worry about losing your game saves to human error or a dying hard drive again.
Not a mod, but kinda close to what you want. There's an app called Gamesave Manager that will scan your computer and automatically make backups of whatever game you want. I use it to backup my Payday 2 saves periodically. You can also tell it to automatically make a backup at predetermined times. Finally it has a feature called Sync & Link which will use symbolic links to put all your saves on Dropbox or Google Drive, effectively allowing all your saves to be on the cloud.
If all you want is your personal stuff, you could just copy what you want to your external drive through Windows without the need for extra software.
As for game saves, GameSave Manager is a good choice since it knows where a lot of games keep their save files, so it is an easy "one-click to backup" option. If you use Steam, some games support Steam Cloud which backs up your game saves on Valve's servers. Support varies by game though, so something like GameSave Manager is probably the better bet.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/
I am using this software to move games between hdd and ssd instead of reinstalling (it has a lot of other functions related to gamesaves but I tried only this one). It basically moves the folder and creates symbolic link from the original location (works even on steam games). Faster than reinstalling and you don't have to worry about saves or settings.
PC files are in
<your steam folder>\userdata\60563481\234630\local\project cars\profiles
You could use Gamesave Manager instead to make it a little easier.
If you're worried about Uplay and savegames, you should:
manually back up the "savegames" folder located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\savegames
This will also backup other saves of Uplay games you own as well
OR, if you use DropBox, Google Drive or any other cloud service, you could
- (Optional) disable Uplay Cloud sync
- create a symlink of the above mentioned savegames folder into your dropbox folder
This will basically make your own "cloud sync", with 30 day backups (assuming free dropbox account).
Alternatively, if you don't want to do anything manually, you can use GameSave Manager to automatically back them up (it also allows you to symlink to your cloud service too)