Save Game Locations - Why appdata?

[Stone Chipper]

I don't know why most games these days insist on using the various folders under appdata for saves. What was ever so wrong with *user*/Documents/My Games? At least it was intuitive and easy to find. I feel appdata is the sort of area (less advanced)users should be poking around in.

Would have saved countless google searches across the entire industry.

[rawWwRrr]

Why?

Windows.

[Stone Chipper]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย rawWwRrr:

Why?

Windows.

Nah, Windows isn't the issue. I still have a few modern games that save under My Games. So there isn't any kind of restriction/limitation in place.

But please elaborate if you know something I clearly don't.

[zirkustier]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that a PC can have several user accounts, and then everyone has their own documents folder.

[Stone Chipper]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย zirkustier:

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that a PC can have several user accounts, and then everyone has their own documents folder.

Well, appdata is also sub folder of each individual PC user account. So it is not that either.

[Nx Machina]

My Games was a standard that Microsoft wanted to impose as the default location. Developers chose otherwise and for a specific reason. Why not ask them.

[Kargor]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Stone Chipper:

I don't know why most games these days insist on using the various folders under appdata for saves. What was ever so wrong with *user*/Documents/My Games?

Did you ever look at your Explorer windws? "Documents" has a shortcut there, because it's meant for things that you "open".

When was the last time you've "opened" a savefile via double-click from the desktop? Probably never. That's why "Documents" is the wrong place, and "AppData" is the much better choice -- it's meant for stuff that an application stores for itself, but that doesn't really "concern" users in the sense that they would want to access the files as such.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย zirkustier:

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that a PC can have several user accounts, and then everyone has their own documents folder.

Everyone has their own AppData too.

[Ben Lubar]

No major game engine saves in My Games by default. All three of the major ones I can think of off the top of my head save in local appdata.

[Overseer]

Save file location has always been a mess and each developer decides where to put files. You can even have saves at A and config files at B. They never came up with a standard. Although there have been attempts, which then only made it worse.
I just think it would be best if you could set the location yourself as like some standard API engines or Steam use. But that will never happen.

[T9]

Appdata is because app data
Makes sense

MS added my games because devs were too challenged not to spam the documents folder. Some still are

[karidosu]

Why that bothers OP?

[sfnhltb]

AppData is the correct place on windows for such files - saves and other such files should go in a subfolder of Roaming so they transfer between installs for the same user (if set up), and Local for things such as settings files that are per install and shouldn't transfer. Either steam cloud or any backup solution should normally be backing up/transferring these files so users shouldn't need to access them normally (unless save scumming).

Documents is wrong and was just the place developers dropped things in rather than use folders in program files once Microsoft finally started restricting putting things there (and actually make Windows try to support multiuser operation without users potentially breaking/affecting each others use of common applications), and MyGames is just a hack to try to slightly clean up that sort of behaviour.

Of course then you have the other exceptions, like (linux originally?) games that dump a folder in the user root, often with a dot in front of the name, or the ones that still put save files in the application folder (so in steamapps/common/game folder/saves or something like that when installed by steam), or in Program Data (even if the game itself is in Program Files (x86), or in the steam user data folders (steam/userdata/userid/appid).

[Kargor]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย sfnhltb:

Of course then you have the other exceptions, like (linux originally?) games that dump a folder in the user root, often with a dot in front of the name,

One of my projects is a software that interacts with Steam, and also has to store stuff (account data and settings, cache data) somewhere. It simply uses different locations for Linux and Windows builds, to account for their differing conventions and the fact that the libraries that I'm using don't cover this.

[pckirk]

nowadays it is due to the fact that a lot of windows users have there my document folder in the One Drive account and that screws up usage for save games.

[Crazy Tiger]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย pckirk:

nowadays it is due to the fact that a lot of windows users have there my document folder in the One Drive account and that screws up usage for save games.

I always turn off One Drive. Absolutely no use for that.

[NuLife]

it depends on where the dev assigns it also, some games in documents some in appdata and some in game folder. it can get annoying, lost saves cause of it....