Steam Deck and PC saves not syncing

[Oahkery]

I was recently traveling, so I fired up a game on my Steam Deck to play (Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, if it matters). However, I had no internet access at the time, and I had forgotten that I hadn't played that game on my Steam Deck yet, so when I loaded it up, I obviously didn't have my cloud saves. That was fine; I just played a different game.

However, when I later got internet access, I opened the game on my Steam Deck again, expecting it to sync to my saved game in the cloud, but it still had it the same as the first time I opened it, with no games saved and the only option to start a new game. I've deleted and reinstalled it on my Steam Deck, and it still won't pull my saves. I'm back home, and on my PC, I still have my old saves, and it says the Steam Cloud is synced, but still, when I try to start the game on my Deck it won't download my saves.

So is there any way to force the cloud saves to override my Deck saves? I'm not even getting a notice or an option; the game just starts, and my saves aren't there. This is really frustrating, because I'm well into the game on PC and am not going to start over, so it's basically just a game I can't play on my Steam Deck now.

[GlaucomaPredator]

Some games don't support cloud saves.
If it does, on the game launch page you should see cloud save status. If that's not there no cloud save support exists.

If it's there, launch the game and close it, the cloud save should update.

[elocanth]

Originally posted by GlaucomaPredator:

Some games don't support cloud saves.
If it does, on the game launch page you should see cloud save status. If that's not there no cloud save support exists.

If it's there, launch the game and close it, the cloud save should update.

It's not a given that cloud save enabled games will sync properly, either. Blasphemous comes to mind as an example. It will not automatically sync between Linux and Windows save files. It's likely just an oversight by the developer, but it can happen.

The workaround is to manually sync between your Deck and gaming rig.

[Oahkery]

Originally posted by GlaucomaPredator:

Some games don't support cloud saves.
If it does, on the game launch page you should see cloud save status. If that's not there no cloud save support exists.

If it's there, launch the game and close it, the cloud save should update.

The game obviously supports cloud saves, since I posted asking about the cloud saves.

Originally posted by elocanth:

The workaround is to manually sync between your Deck and gaming rig.

Yes, so how do I do that? There are no options that I can see that will manually sync anything. That was my entire question.

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by Oahkery:

Yes, so how do I do that? There are no options that I can see that will manually sync anything. That was my entire question.

It depends on the game. Each title will store their user progress files somewhere. It's just copying those back and forth between devices. I don't know specifically where that title stores theirs, but usually someone has identified it in the game specific forum. Some of them use your Documents folder, some of them will use your APPDATA folder... etc..

[Mahjik]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/3194745954518308684/#c4706830261920423017

[Oahkery]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/3194745954518308684/#c4706830261920423017

Ah, that's disappointing. So cloud saves just simply don't work for this game between the two platforms. Manually moving my saves over would only work the one time; if I wanted to switch back and forth, I'd have to move them each time. Guess that's a game I won't be playing anymore, then.

[Deane Fox]

I really feel like Valve NEEDS to implement some kind of "force download/upload" option when it comes to cloud saves (that's available ANYTIME, not just when steam somehow detects a difference, which is kinda rare in my experience). I've had multiple games now just...not sync properly when going from the deck to PC or vice versa to the point where I've just resigned myself to being stuck on one platform if I want to make/keep any meaningful progress because all the various tweaks and processes to make it work are just too much trouble to keep bothering with every time I move between platforms.

[PopinFRESH]

Originally posted by Deane Fox:

I really feel like Valve NEEDS to implement some kind of "force download/upload" option when it comes to cloud saves (that's available ANYTIME, not just when steam somehow detects a difference, which is kinda rare in my experience). I've had multiple games now just...not sync properly when going from the deck to PC or vice versa to the point where I've just resigned myself to being stuck on one platform if I want to make/keep any meaningful progress because all the various tweaks and processes to make it work are just too much trouble to keep bothering with every time I move between platforms.

The problem is that the original implementation was done specifically in a way that didn't require much work on the part of the developer to support it. Essentially the developer just needed to tell Steam what the path is to the games save data and enable it in the games profile. Steam would only sync a save when the game was cleanly exited and the game process returned the exit code to Steam.

Because of this method Steam has no insight as to when it's safe to sync the data (e.g. without risking corruption of the save files) which is why they haven't implemented what you're suggesting. Valve has updated Steam Cloud Saves system specifically for Steam Deck to allow developers to signal to Steam when it should sync the data and what data to sync so that Steam can sync to Cloud Saves while the game is "running". This new method requires developers to integrate Steam Cloud Saves functionality into the game (e.g. when the game performs a save operation at the end once it has confirmed it was written to disk the game can tell Steam to sync and then give it time to sync before locking the file again.

As more games get updated for Steam Deck I'm sure the number of games that will have updated their save systems to support Steam Cloud Saves will increase.

If you're interested in reading about the more technical details


Steam Cloud API and Steam Auto-Cloud for General Steam Cloud Save Information

Steam Auto-Cloud e.g. the original implementation for games that didn't want to integrate the Steam Cloud API into their save functions.

Steam Dynamic Cloud Sync e.g. the new functionality introduced for, primarily, the Steam Deck to allow the developers to integrate a dynamic cloud sync into their games save function

[leonekjr]

On your Steam Deck enable the latest stable Proton version for the game.
Go to the Properties of the game under the cog icon, then in Compatibility section enable option Force using Stram Play tool (more or less) and from the drop-down menu pick up the latest version of Proton available.
This fixed my synching issue with Chaos on Deponia and Deponia: The Complete Journey when I enabled this for Proton 7.0-2. (My old saves on Steam Deck has been wiped out and replaced by newer saves from my PC and installed on my Steam Deck)
Hope this will help.

[MrDiplIng]

I had the problem, that the steam deck overwrote my save games in the cloud and they were lost than. This happened twice, because I got a new deck and it happened again.

[DrewForReal]

Originally posted by leonekjr:

On your Steam Deck enable the latest stable Proton version for the game.
Go to the Properties of the game under the cog icon, then in Compatibility section enable option Force using Stram Play tool (more or less) and from the drop-down menu pick up the latest version of Proton available.
This fixed my synching issue with Chaos on Deponia and Deponia: The Complete Journey when I enabled this for Proton 7.0-2. (My old saves on Steam Deck has been wiped out and replaced by newer saves from my PC and installed on my Steam Deck)
Hope this will help.

This method worked for me when I was having trouble with the deck not syncing properly.

[moose1207]

Originally posted by MrDiplIng:

I had the problem, that the steam deck overwrote my save games in the cloud and they were lost than. This happened twice, because I got a new deck and it happened again.

This happened to me as well. I had 40+ hours of cyberpunk2077 and had issues getting it working on steam deck. When u gave up and tried to continue on PC my saves were lost.

I hope steam figures this out. How hard is it to maybe keep a backup of your save files in the cloud?

Why if there is a discrepancy isn't the latest version kept/backed up just in case.

I love my deck, but this seems like simple stuff that should have been ironed out before deck launch. Syncing needs to happen without the user even being aware it happens!

[NurdFerguson]

Originally posted by Oahkery:

Originally posted by Mahjik:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/3194745954518308684/#c4706830261920423017

Ah, that's disappointing. So cloud saves just simply don't work for this game between the two platforms. Manually moving my saves over would only work the one time; if I wanted to switch back and forth, I'd have to move them each time. Guess that's a game I won't be playing anymore, then.

you could try BT sync (Resilio i think its called now) i use this for syncing my addons / saved variables between pcs for WoW and works well

[miraitoto]

Originally posted by elocanth:

Originally posted by GlaucomaPredator:

Some games don't support cloud saves.
If it does, on the game launch page you should see cloud save status. If that's not there no cloud save support exists.

If it's there, launch the game and close it, the cloud save should update.

It's not a given that cloud save enabled games will sync properly, either. Blasphemous comes to mind as an example. It will not automatically sync between Linux and Windows save files. It's likely just an oversight by the developer, but it can happen.

The workaround is to manually sync between your Deck and gaming rig.

I kept searching Blasphemous for an hour, I didn't imagine that there could be such issue lol.

[GlaucomaPredator]

Originally posted by Oahkery:

Originally posted by elocanth:

The workaround is to manually sync between your Deck and gaming rig.

Yes, so how do I do that? There are no options that I can see that will manually sync anything. That was my entire question.

Use Syncthing, free and open source. But you'll have to log into desktop mode to sync your saves.