Convincing studios/devs to stop using the My Documents Folder

[Samoth]

For some reason game studios and others have begun to use the My Documents Folder to store parts of the program.
I for one am tired of seeing that folder getting stuffed with more and more things, until I now can't separate all my things, from all of their things.
I wish there was a way to come to common ground on this. There has to be 20 folders in it now, and growing. It irks me to no end, and it's only getting worse.

[JoniCat]

It is rather irksome and somewhat vexing.

[Start_Running]

You know that for most games out there you can change that by editing the ini files right?
Thety started using that because people hated having to hunt across a dozen different folders looking for config, and save files. Plus it allowed settings, saves, etc to be tied to users.

[Samoth]

but now that there is 20 in there i would have to manually change the path for them all.
They should be using the Windows Temp file folder, as it was intended to be

[nullable]

No matter where you think those files should be put, someone would argue they should be somewhere else. Once upon a time all save games and related files were in the game's directory. Which was a kind of hassle. And now they're in my documents or app data, and that's a different kind of hassle.

I prefer the modern solution though, my documents is easy to find and I tend to be annoyed when a game stores saves and such in appData or the game's folder.

However I don't have any expectation that My Documents should look a certain way, or be a certain kind of neatness. It's just a folder at the end of the day and not a sacred one.

[Heretic]

It should really be in appdata/local

[Satoru]

引用自 Bug：

It should really be in appdata/local

That's also sort of bad because most users have no idea where that is, and isince there's no environment variable for it, its actually harder to get to for users. Also note appdata is also hidden by default making it again a chore for most users to find.

Yes its 'technically' correct, but its also 'practically' bad

[Samoth]

anywhere but "My' Documents, plez! :)

[Satoru]

引用自 Samoth：

For some reason game studios and others have begun to use the My Documents Folder to store parts of the program.

Im not sure how long you've been using your computer, but unless 'begun' means "literally since My Documents has existed" then yes gamedevs have been using my documents for that. This is not some new 'movement' because MS tehcnially says you're not supposed to do that.

I wish there was a way to come to common ground on this. There has to be 20 folders in it now, and growing. It irks me to no end, and it's only getting worse.

There is no 'correct' answer and that MS has told basically devs a different answer ever 3-4 years means ther is no 'common' place to put things. First it was My Documents, then My Games, then My Documents/My Games, then 'technically' to Appdata/local. Pick a year and roll a die to see which one of the above was the 'recommended' thing you were 'supposed' to do.

You also have to think about it from a practical standpoint When users have problems everyone has access to their MyDocuments folder and as such its much easier for users to find files/data if they need to backup or get files for developers for troubleshooting.

[Start_Running]

It's not like the industry moved towards it as some sort of plan.. They all just gravitated to the solution that works best ffor them.

[T9]

There is exactly one place your place your stuff as a dev. It even has the name on it. Don't need 200 IQ
A savegame is not my document lol, what bs

[RiO]

引用自 Bug：

It should really be in appdata/local

Users/<user>/AppData/Local is for machine-dependent cache data; configuration files; etc.
Users/<user>AppData/Roaming is for machine-independent configuration files and for just-in-time persisting the last running state of an application when the user closes it (and if the application wants to support that kind of thing) when it's something you can resume cross-machine. (If you can't; then it should go into Local.)
Roaming is also where e.g. automatic recovery backups for work-in-progress material should be saved, in case you want to support crash recovery.
For both AppData folders, the intent is to keep the footprint small and/or to cap it with a known upper bound. (E.g. for caches; maintain a maximum size and evict whatever is oldest once the cap is reached.)

AppData is not meant for files explicitly saved by the user themselves. Period. It is meant only to support the functions of the application itself. Moreover; anything placed into it should be considered transient in nature. Like a private temporary files folder.

There are other special system folders meant to house files specifically saved by the user.
Notably:
Users/<user>/Documents is intended for documents and general purpose files the user themselves explicitly saves. And finally
Users/<user>/Saved Games is actually the folder specifically intended for game saves.

[Satoru]

引用自 RiO：

引用自 Bug：

It should really be in appdata/local

Users/<user>/AppData/Local is for machine-dependent cache data; configuration files; etc.
Users/<user>AppData/Roaming is for machine-independent configuration files and for just-in-time persisting the last running state of an application when the user closes it (and if the application wants to support that kind of thing) when it's something you can resume cross-machine. (If you can't; then it should go into Local.)
Users/<user>/Documents is intended for documents and general purpose files the user themselves explicitly saves.
Users/<user>/Saved Games is actually the folder specifically intended for game saves.

Note the “official” way creates a very bad situation where auto-saves are “supposed” to be in appdata, while manual saves can “sorta” be in my documents. MS created “My Games” but then even abandoned that as a concept too. Xbox game pass for Pc game store save files in an entirely different directory structure under appdata/local/packages

Even MS itself can’t make up its mind about where this stuff is supposed to go

[rawWwRrr]

引用自 Samoth：

I wish there was a way to come to common ground on this.

My Documents was the common ground. The old way was far worse. You never knew where they would be. Publishers would often create their own saved game folders, each one different. Sometimes it was on the Desktop or off the root of the system drive to the installation folder of the game. They were all over.

This is the best explanation about why it is the way it is today:
https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/p14rdh/comment/h8barmc/

In early Windows versions, it was easy and convenient to put save games in the same folder as where the game installed. This eventually became off-limits because it's better for security purposes to protect access to the Program Files folder.

Around when that happened, Microsoft gave developers a way to ask the Windows machine for the location of a handful of special folders. The important ones for this question are:

"AppData"

"Documents"

"AppData" is a location associated with your user account where things the application wants to save but does not want the user to interact with should be stored. This is where programs should put things like settings files or downloaded data files. It's usually at something like "C:\Users\YourUserName\AppDataLocal", but it can be moved. There's no default shortcut to it in the File Explorer window, so most people don't even know it's there.

"Documents" is your documents folder. Developers are discouraged from dumping files here without permission, but also guided to put files we believe the user will want to interact with there. A lot of people want to be able to back up their save games, so placing them in the Documents folder makes it easy for users to find them.

So it's really just that this is one of the easy, safe, accessible places to store game saves.

[Start_Running]

引用自 Satoru：

引用自 RiO：

Users/<user>/AppData/Local is for machine-dependent cache data; configuration files; etc.
Users/<user>AppData/Roaming is for machine-independent configuration files and for just-in-time persisting the last running state of an application when the user closes it (and if the application wants to support that kind of thing) when it's something you can resume cross-machine. (If you can't; then it should go into Local.)
Users/<user>/Documents is intended for documents and general purpose files the user themselves explicitly saves.
Users/<user>/Saved Games is actually the folder specifically intended for game saves.

Note the “official” way creates a very bad situation where auto-saves are “supposed” to be in appdata, while manual saves can “sorta” be in my documents. MS created “My Games” but then even abandoned that as a concept too. Xbox game pass for Pc game store save files in an entirely different directory structure under appdata/local/packages

Even MS itself can’t make up its mind about where this stuff is supposed to go

Bingo. That's sorta the issue. And the fact that each new windows version seems to change something in regards to this....

引用自 tipsy：

There is exactly one place your place your stuff as a dev. It even has the name on it. Don't need 200 IQ
A savegame is not my document lol, what bs

Well they are files localized to a specific user and if the PC is set up properly, beyond the access of any other users that may operate the machine.

The simple thing is. It's still a might better than the old days. At least they're more or less contained within one area, rather than spread around between various homelevel directories.
As said you can simply alter the cfg, ini files in most cases. The issue is that developers aren't going to create different isnstall instructions for each platform they're on. My docuiments wound up as what was used because it's ione folder they know just about every windows machine has, and will have for some time yet to come.

[Paratech2008]

A big problem for some users is modern Windows tries to keep the end user from accessing many folders due to the fact that they may break something.

Sometimes users want to backup save data and they are saved in "restricted" areas.

Microsoft doesn't like end users having complete access to their boot drive. They think too many end users would break things if they were given free reign of their software and hardware.