Critical Overwriting Save-Issue

[Majoreon]

Hey, I'd like to preface what I'm about to say by stating that Slay the Spire is my new favorite game. It pains me as much to write this as it does for you to read it, I just want this not to happen for anyone else. I also didn't reply on the Pinned Save Issues post since it's NOT the same issue (merely Steam sync or crashing/losing progress).

I don't know how to put this but there's something of a critical bug (or design flaw) with the save system in StS. The account of what happened:
1. I first got the game, played, fell in love with it, all was well.
2. Have family sharing turned on, so convinced my wife to give it a try, see if she liked it before I bought her the game. She did try it, she loved it BUT it gave her MY save data and ALL of MY achievements on HER account. RED FLAG right off the bat, here the problem begins!!
3. She has another Windows user account on my PC too (in addition to her own PC), so when she tried it on MY PC (her Windows AND Steam account), same result, she had my ascensions, unlocks, etc, on her account. Worse, when she now played the game on this PC and her accounts, it somehow saves and overwrites MY data... It's literally rage-inducing.

I tried clearing the Save Data (manually. it's really dumb not to have a button inside the game yet guys, like really ?!... I stream for a living, play games all the time, every other game in existence now has a Clear Profile/Delete Save button... for a reason too. Manually clearing these is troublesome and prone to user error), following the indications by the devs on another steam post, and it seemed to help somewhat...
BUT only temporarily, since as soon as she plays on MY PC again, which happens when she streams (on my machine), as soon as she saves, it'll somehow overwrite AND WORSE, cloud-sync it up on Steam.
When I finally go start my own stream and runs, I have her profile name [top left corner] and have lost ascension levels and progress I've made... (since her own PC didn't SteamCloud-sync up the changes I made the previous night on my account, correctly I might add... but then she makes progress off-stream on hers AND when she streams earlier than me in the afternoon on my PC, she downloads her off-stream progress and then plays with it and when she SAVES IT AGAIN at the end of stream it overwrites my own progress on my account .... like, HOW? I'm a software engineer and I'm baffled by what it is that's going on here!!)

Devs, please reply and lets trace this problem, together. I cannot play the game like this, at all, and I love it. Worse, I think it might start affecting more people and really shed a negative light on this amazing game.
This would be a niche situation but easily replicated by anyone with family sharing and a Home PC and a Laptop.
PS: Just in case anyone's wondering, she DOES have the game bought & owned on her account. I gifted it to her, right after she first tried it.

[BeastofBones]

Not a dev, but just to make sure we're on the same page: All of your stats / profile etc. are contained within Steam\steamapps\common\SlayTheSpire\preferences (or betaPreferences) directory, and any active runs are in the saves directory. If you're only hitting the saves directory, then yes you're losing stuff. (Ascension progress, player name, etc.)

As a temp workaround, you could simply have yourself or your wife copy / zip up the preferences directory at the end of each play session, one copy for each of you. Then whoever's taking over next unzips their copy to start a run. Turn off cloud sync for Slay the Spire to avoid any accidental overwrite issues. As you said, ideally the preferences folder should be split into profiles subdirectories, and the game just selects the right one.

[Majoreon]

Firstly, thank you for your reply. Your temporary workaround might actually be the one way for me to be able to play on the same PC as my wife, right now.
However , I do not think this is at all 'good enough'. This is evidently a situation which is not that niche. Any household with 2 players of StS where both have their own laptop and then share one household Desktop PC, is going to be affected by this and suffer from overwriten save files and loss of progression.
That is inexcusable and frankly just poor Game System Architecture. No other game that I know of suffers from a flaw as critical as this. All Mega Crit would have to do is literally separate the progression/save information by Steam Account/User ID... all other games do this too... for a reason!
In my humble opinion, from what I've gathered from the people I interact with, Players value, and desire to feel like their progression and savefile is 'safe', much more than they wanted Endless or Custom modes. So all of these Design Flaws and Bugs with the Save systems, need to be addressed at a very high priority.

[Jiggle, the Handle]

Originally posted by JoeRoman:

Firstly, thank you for your reply. Your temporary workaround might actually be the one way for me to be able to play on the same PC as my wife, right now.
However , I do not think this is at all 'good enough'. This is evidently a situation which is not that niche. Any household with 2 players of StS where both have their own laptop and then share one household Desktop PC, is going to be affected by this and suffer from overwriten save files and loss of progression.
That is inexcusable and frankly just poor Game System Architecture. No other game that I know of suffers from a flaw as critical as this. All Mega Crit would have to do is literally separate the progression/save information by Steam Account/User ID... all other games do this too... for a reason!
In my humble opinion, from what I've gathered from the people I interact with, Players value, and desire to feel like their progression and savefile is 'safe', much more than they wanted Endless or Custom modes. So all of these Design Flaws and Bugs with the Save systems, need to be addressed at a very high priority.

+1, me and my wife are in the same boat

[WimblyNBimbly]

Originally posted by Gentleman Jack:

Originally posted by JoeRoman:

Firstly, thank you for your reply. Your temporary workaround might actually be the one way for me to be able to play on the same PC as my wife, right now.
However , I do not think this is at all 'good enough'. This is evidently a situation which is not that niche. Any household with 2 players of StS where both have their own laptop and then share one household Desktop PC, is going to be affected by this and suffer from overwriten save files and loss of progression.
That is inexcusable and frankly just poor Game System Architecture. No other game that I know of suffers from a flaw as critical as this. All Mega Crit would have to do is literally separate the progression/save information by Steam Account/User ID... all other games do this too... for a reason!
In my humble opinion, from what I've gathered from the people I interact with, Players value, and desire to feel like their progression and savefile is 'safe', much more than they wanted Endless or Custom modes. So all of these Design Flaws and Bugs with the Save systems, need to be addressed at a very high priority.

+1, me and my wife are in the same boat

Having the same problem here, my save file was overwritten by my GF's (we share a desktop, but each play on our own laptops as well). Has this gotten any more attention?

[Matt_Khanh]

Same thing just happened to my wife and I. She has lost her file completely and now is getting synced with mine. Pretty upsetting since we bought 2 copies of this game and have now effectively lost an entire copy

[Turtlemuffin]

Seems like this has never been addressed all these years after the game's release. I just recently got into the game and am having a similar issue now after setting up Family Library Sharing. There are several other posts on here asking about the issue and the devs don't appear to have responded to any of them, and they're also not responding to my email or Discord message. Unbelievable that a game would have such a critical error with save files.