ATTN DEVELOPERS

[shesHARDCORE]

It’s been like a month since the last update deleted my save files; many others have experienced this as well. You have not responded to any posts regarding this and it’s been a month now but you post almost every single day about other games. We demand some kind of update on when/how this issue will be fixed! If not, just give me my money back and I’ll just forget this game exist. Smh wasted potential; sad.

[Flint_6]

Hey shesHARDCORE. You're right, we didn't do a good job of communication as we try to find out what's going on. I apologize!

We noticed reports of lost save games and started investigating. We found similar cases in other game's forums here on Steam which indicates that the cloud save system from Steam might in certain circumstances be involved in corrupting save games. We contacted Valve's support but there was no "do this and all will be good" solution. The save game system, technically, is pretty straight forward to use for developers so there is not a lot we can do on our end.

It pains us greatly to see people lose their progress. I have had my personal share of Steam games I played suddenly lose save games. It caused me to insta-abandon the game and not pick it up anymore. I understand the frustration.

There are 2 ways to prevent this from happening in the future.
1. Turn off cloud saves for Garden Life. If you don't have another machine you want to sync your save games to, it should be a viable option to turn this feature off.

2. As we cannot do anything about Steam's Cloud Save system, we're now implementing a local save game backup. Basically your last few save games will be stored safely in another location on your computer's hard drive. Should something happen, you can restore a save game and not lose the progress.

This patch will come out with one of our next patches.

Again, allow me to apologize for the lack of communication.

[czerniana]

Originally posted by Flint_6:

Hey shesHARDCORE. You're right, we didn't do a good job of communication as we try to find out what's going on. I apologize!

We noticed reports of lost save games and started investigating. We found similar cases in other game's forums here on Steam which indicates that the cloud save system from Steam might in certain circumstances be involved in corrupting save games. We contacted Valve's support but there was no "do this and all will be good" solution. The save game system, technically, is pretty straight forward to use for developers so there is not a lot we can do on our end.

It pains us greatly to see people lose their progress. I have had my personal share of Steam games I played suddenly lose save games. It caused me to insta-abandon the game and not pick it up anymore. I understand the frustration.

There are 2 ways to prevent this from happening in the future.
1. Turn off cloud saves for Garden Life. If you don't have another machine you want to sync your save games to, it should be a viable option to turn this feature off.

2. As we cannot do anything about Steam's Cloud Save system, we're now implementing a local save game backup. Basically your last few save games will be stored safely in another location on your computer's hard drive. Should something happen, you can restore a save game and not lose the progress.

This patch will come out with one of our next patches.

Again, allow me to apologize for the lack of communication.

Thank you! That is going to greatly help. I'm used to having to go digging for an old save, but having to make them myself is not something I ever remember to do. That you're going to patch this in so I don't have to is going to be a huge help, and keep a lot of us enjoying the game.

[shesHARDCORE]

Originally posted by czerniana:

Originally posted by Flint_6:

Hey shesHARDCORE. You're right, we didn't do a good job of communication as we try to find out what's going on. I apologize!

We noticed reports of lost save games and started investigating. We found similar cases in other game's forums here on Steam which indicates that the cloud save system from Steam might in certain circumstances be involved in corrupting save games. We contacted Valve's support but there was no "do this and all will be good" solution. The save game system, technically, is pretty straight forward to use for developers so there is not a lot we can do on our end.

It pains us greatly to see people lose their progress. I have had my personal share of Steam games I played suddenly lose save games. It caused me to insta-abandon the game and not pick it up anymore. I understand the frustration.

There are 2 ways to prevent this from happening in the future.
1. Turn off cloud saves for Garden Life. If you don't have another machine you want to sync your save games to, it should be a viable option to turn this feature off.

2. As we cannot do anything about Steam's Cloud Save system, we're now implementing a local save game backup. Basically your last few save games will be stored safely in another location on your computer's hard drive. Should something happen, you can restore a save game and not lose the progress.

This patch will come out with one of our next patches.

Again, allow me to apologize for the lack of communication.

Thank you! That is going to greatly help. I'm used to having to go digging for an old save, but having to make them myself is not something I ever remember to do. That you're going to patch this in so I don't have to is going to be a huge help, and keep a lot of us enjoying the game.

Are you saying that there is a way to find my save that disappeared?

[shesHARDCORE]

Originally posted by Flint_6:

Hey shesHARDCORE. You're right, we didn't do a good job of communication as we try to find out what's going on. I apologize!

We noticed reports of lost save games and started investigating. We found similar cases in other game's forums here on Steam which indicates that the cloud save system from Steam might in certain circumstances be involved in corrupting save games. We contacted Valve's support but there was no "do this and all will be good" solution. The save game system, technically, is pretty straight forward to use for developers so there is not a lot we can do on our end.

It pains us greatly to see people lose their progress. I have had my personal share of Steam games I played suddenly lose save games. It caused me to insta-abandon the game and not pick it up anymore. I understand the frustration.

There are 2 ways to prevent this from happening in the future.
1. Turn off cloud saves for Garden Life. If you don't have another machine you want to sync your save games to, it should be a viable option to turn this feature off.

2. As we cannot do anything about Steam's Cloud Save system, we're now implementing a local save game backup. Basically your last few save games will be stored safely in another location on your computer's hard drive. Should something happen, you can restore a save game and not lose the progress.

This patch will come out with one of our next patches.

Again, allow me to apologize for the lack of communication.

I greatly appreciate the update on what’s going on and excited to know that (hopefully) in the near future, there will be a “fix” to this issue. I suggest making a post regarding everything you said in your comment. A lot of people are waiting to hear from you about this.

[Flint_6]

Originally posted by shesHARDCORE:

Are you saying that there is a way to find my save that disappeared?

Unfortunately not. Whatever destructive dependencies are causing save games to get corrupted are currently irreversible. Somewhere between saving and uploading the save to Steam Cloud something happens that corrupts the save file.

We are working on a patch that will include creating backups of your save game. If this malfunction would strike again after the patch is out, you would be able to restore a backup of that save game.

We haven't found a way of restoring the corrupted save games to a working state :(((

I hope that clarifies the timeline.

[Snow]

Originally posted by Flint_6:

Originally posted by shesHARDCORE:

Are you saying that there is a way to find my save that disappeared?

Unfortunately not. Whatever destructive dependencies are causing save games to get corrupted are currently irreversible. Somewhere between saving and uploading the save to Steam Cloud something happens that corrupts the save file.

We are working on a patch that will include creating backups of your save game. If this malfunction would strike again after the patch is out, you would be able to restore a backup of that save game.

We haven't found a way of restoring the corrupted save games to a working state :(((

I hope that clarifies the timeline.

Is there a way to purposely delete a savegame so I can start over in that slot? I can't seem to find an option, once you select a slot it just saves there and you can load it but that seems to be it.