Does disabling cloud saving actually delete the data in the cloud?

[Dowlphwin]

Is this confirmed? If for example someone has accumulated lots of cloud saves of various games over the years and then globally disables cloud saving, does it remove all that data from the cloud? I read the allegation somewhere, but I am skeptical, and I don't want to enable the feature just for experimenting, although it is vexing that it doesn't show me how much a game has stored unless the feature is enabled again.

Because I have a Steam cloud log with many entries of "persisting file to the cloud" of games where I thought the feature was inactive, as I have had it almost all the time. But those folders in the Steam user data are also empty. Specifically those. So no cloud copy prepped?
Could this indicate that there was a policy change where more recent games don't store a cloud copy while older did even if cloud storage was disabled? I have lots of local game save data in Steam from older games.

But can this be reliable and also process long-forgotten games not installed? It is of course not feasible to check every single game manually.

But is there a difference in results between global disable and global enable with then disabling it for a specific game?

UPDATE: I now learned there is
https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage
now.
Is that reliably all the save data in the cloud, not just after some new system came active?
Also, that I cannot also choose to delete them from there is annoying. It confirms I would have to take extra measures for each game listed.
Even worse, there are also Steam client saves and they may contain data that shouldn't be there, but how could I delete those??

[En Oh]

I don't think so, tho it may depend on the game? I do know anytime there's a cloud save and one on yr pc, it will always ask which one do you want to overwrite, so you don't need to worry about the cloud automatically changing yr pc files.

[Yujah]

No, cloud data is not deleted by disabling cloud saves. You can see your cloud at https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage but managing it is anywhere from clumsy to impossible. Specifically, to delete files from it you need to upload zero-byte long files over to be deleted files, i.e., truncate your local copies of the file(s) you wish to delete and sync.

Why? No idea. It's your data and you should be able to easily manage it without that opaque nonsense.

A note is that I'm pretty sure (and seem to remember but I can't verify now) that there is/are third-party tool(s) to assist with the above -- but be very careful with any tool that you give access to your account to.

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

No, cloud data is not deleted by disabling cloud saves. You can see your cloud at https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage but managing it is anywhere from clumsy to impossible. Specifically, to delete files from it you need to upload zero-byte long files over to be deleted files, i.e., truncate your local copies of the file(s) you wish to delete and sync.

Why? No idea. It's your data and you should be able to easily manage it without that opaque nonsense.

A note is that I'm pretty sure (and seem to remember but I can't verify now) that there is/are third-party tool(s) to assist with the above -- but be very careful with any tool that you give access to your account to.

Yeah, right now I don't even know how this is done properly since the remotecache.vdf also contains info on file names and sizes. It is insane. (Edit: powershell clc can zero all files in a folder.)
Although, that would not really clear the cloud but only overwrite the files with empty ones, and I would have to install and run each game for it. Madness. If the cloud storage management can be trusted, then I have very few games with sava data in the cloud.

Otherwise I might try bothering Valve with a limited personal data removal request. They are keeping stuff on cloud servers that is potentially not OK.

[Yujah]

In Windows (I'm myself generally a Linux user) you can use the Clear-Content PowerShell command to truncate one or more files: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/clear-content

I recently in fact did so to delete a bunch of unwanted old "profiles" from my Dirt 3 saves when the game did not allow for this itself. The hardest part was in fact getting Steam to come up with the cloudsave conflict dialogue -- but that is what it does / should do when it detects a mismatch. You can then choose to sync cloud -> local or local -> cloud, with latter resulting in upload of the local zero-byte files, hence, of the remote ones being deleted (but note, they are then actually deleted, not just truncated also remotely).

Needing to do that ♥♥♥♥ pisses me off each time...

EDIT: Actually, in Dirt 3's case I remember it was a two-step process; the truncates, but I also needed to once delete all actual entries from remotecache.vdf -- I believe post-sync. It's a mess.

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

In Windows (I'm myself generally a Linux user) you can use the Clear-Content PowerShell command to truncate one or more files: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/clear-content

I recently in fact did so to delete a bunch of unwanted old "profiles" from my Dirt 3 saves when the game did not allow for this itself. The hardest part was in fact getting Steam to come up with the cloudsave conflict dialogue -- but that is what it does / should do when it detects a mismatch. You can then choose to sync cloud -> local or local -> cloud, with latter resulting in upload of the local zero-byte files, hence, of the remote ones being deleted (but note, they are then actually deleted, not just truncated also remotely).

Needing to do that ♥♥♥♥ pisses me off each time...

I jus tried it with one game, zeroes its local data, and it said cloud storage outdated, then I launched the game and it said cloud error in a popup. When I closed the game again, it had written the zero-length files to the cloud and a new one with non-zero length, while not having touched the local files.

A guide said I can also do a backup and then disable cloud saving for it, but I tried that (well, via moving of folder and install info file), but it only SHOWED 0 bytes cloud storage, but the cloud management was still listing it.
Now it claims 0 bytes on cloud with the game installed and having just run it, but it is a lie. It has merely copied the zero-length files over.
And because of all this experimentation I have now a couple more games who without running shoved their data to the cloud.

On the positive side, it seems like I don't even have to run a game anymore. On Steam launch if checks all gamedata for stuff to update the cloud with.
But seems I need to run it if I have no local files, annoyingly, to first get a template for zeroing, but it doesn't work! WTF, so now I have a game written tons of savedata not from local cache but probably directly, and I cannot get rid of the cloud data unless it stores it locally, but for some reason won't!

[Yujah]

Yes, I believe inconsistent "delete on zero-byte file overwrite" is an in fact new thing; I've been using the method for years and whereas it was always at least at that level straightforward, I as per above EDIT remembered that I now also needed to muck about with remotecache.vdf, specifically, deleting all actual entries from it.

As said, getting Steam to throw up an actual cloudsave conflict dialogue was the hardest part and I'm afraid that has made it so that I can't anymore say with certainty what I did in what order -- but I can tell you that I in the end managed to in fact delete what I wanted to delete, so at least it's still possible.

EDIT: Anyways, fascinating(-ish) but need to be off. Hope to see a full HOWTO upon return ;-)

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Yes, I believe inconsistent "delete on zero-byte file overwrite" is an in fact new thing; I've been using the method for years and whereas it was always at least at that level straightforward, I as per above EDIT remembered that I now also needed to muck about with remotecache.vdf, specifically, deleting all actually entries from it.

As said, getting Steam to throw up an actual cloudsave conflict dialogue was the hardest part and I'm afraid that has made it so that I can't anymore say with certainty what I did in what order -- but I can tell you that I in the end managed to in fact delete what I wanted to delete, so at least it's still possible.

I tried removing all file entries from the remotecache info file, but it didn't work, didn't remove the files in the cloud, but instead made new local ones from the cloud.

There is also some additional complexity with steam_autocloud.vdf in the native save folder of a game with no userdata copy, so I assume that might be direct transfer to avoid excessive data redundancy with game that have big savedata, like Witcher 3.
So there I now zeroed the original gamesaves (after making a backup copy) and here the copying of zeroed files actually did delete them in the cloud. I might try the same with other games now. - will be a pain to locate some of their save locations. Even worse, apparently some games do only use Steam's own local cache for saves, which further complicates the matter of whether they can be deleted or need to be kept. (Good that I made a backup.)

[Yujah]

Originally posted by Dowlphwin:

I tried removing all file entries from the remotecache info file, but it didn't work, didn't remove the files in the cloud, but instead made new local ones from the cloud.

An automatic remote -> local sync then. Yes, note that by "cloudsave conflict dialogue" I refer to an actual pop-up dialogue in which Steam asks what to do; if you haven't yet gotten that you haven't yet seen what I mean.

It now pisses me off that I can't remember in more detail right now; will supposedly also look a bit again tomorrow. Good for now in any case that something seems to sometimes work also for you...

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Originally posted by Dowlphwin:

I tried removing all file entries from the remotecache info file, but it didn't work, didn't remove the files in the cloud, but instead made new local ones from the cloud.

An automatic remote -> local sync then. Yes, note that by "cloudsave conflict dialogue" I refer to an actual pop-up dialogue in which Steam asks what to do; if you haven't yet gotten that you haven't yet seen what I mean.

It now pisses me off that I can't remember in more detail right now; will supposedly also look a bit again tomorrow. Good for now in any case that something seems to sometimes work also for you...

I now zeroed all I could, while Steam's server browser config serverbrowser_hist.vdf did update a little but the newest version didn't stick, so the changes it should be reflecting it is not, merely moving servers from favorites to history.

I also discovered that I have more games that display in properties to be having data in the cloud, even though it is not showing. One game uses Steam's own folders but the folder is empty, another uses an AppData folder, and the data size there matches what is displayed. This is so frickin' messy and frustrating and sleazy. It should show zero there!
Maybe check yourself whether you have any game that shows a datasize under cloud storage (if you want to risk enabling the global option.)
Even if it created some default config just from launching it, it shouldn't show storage use there. And also, I am pretty sure I didn't play all those games with cloud active. - Maybe the game's individual setting being on causes this, dunno. When I click on each such game, there can be a quick icon indicating an outdated cloud. - It is all games I actually played instead of just idling for cards or not running them at all.
UPDATE: Deleted all local userdata for various games and now they're showing zeroes.

[Yujah]

Looked a bit and triggering that cloud conflict dialogue is easiest by disabling cloud saves for the title, making whatever changes locally that you want, editing or simply removing remotecache.vdf and reenabling.

However -- that's preferably including shutting down and restarting Steam and starting up and (cleanly) shutting down the title in question at each step, since there's quite a bit of caching of state going on it seems. And also in https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage, meaning you also want to log out there and shut down and restart the browser you view that with lest you draw unwarranted conclusions as to a step's results.

You can get to a desired result manually with the zero-byte file trick -- just did so again with Dirt 3 -- but trying to write down something coherent still turned into such a confusing mess that I thought I'd check the earlier mentioned half-remembered third-party tool and that in fact works as far as I've seen pretty much flawlessly.

Specifically it's the only time I managed to delete things for Dirt 3 totally enough that the game didn't even show anymore on the "remotestorage" web-interface. Not good for batch processing but for manual, specific cloud-interventions, advised:

https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite/releases

Still sucks, but at least a bit less.

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Looked a bit and triggering that cloud conflict dialogue is easiest by disabling cloud saves for the title, making whatever changes locally that you want, editing or simply removing remotecache.vdf and reenabling.

However -- that's preferably including shutting down and restarting Steam and starting up and (cleanly) shutting down the title in question at each step, since there's quite a bit of caching of state going on it seems. And also in https://store.steampowered.com/account/remotestorage, meaning you also want to log out there and shut down and restart the browser you view that with lest you draw unwarranted conclusions as to a step's results.

You can get to a desired result manually with the zero-byte file trick -- just did so again with Dirt 3 -- but trying to write down something coherent still turned into such a confusing mess that I thought I'd check the earlier mentioned half-remembered third-party tool and that in fact works as far as I've seen pretty much flawlessly.

Specifically it's the only time I managed to delete things for Dirt 3 totally enough that the game didn't even show anymore on the "remotestorage" web-interface. Not good for batch processing but for manual, specific cloud-interventions, advised:

https://github.com/GMMan/SteamCloudFileManagerLite/releases

Still sucks, but at least a bit less.

I tried what was suggested there with a game that saves exclusively in Steam userdata, deleting files while the game was running, then closing. It causes crashes. I tried editing the remotecache.vdf to indicate not a single file present, I also tried deleting the file. In all cases Steam decided the cloud version is newer and wanted to download it.
And since on that Github page it also says that files directly in the filesystem where savedata is stored are not listed by that tool, I don't want to run so things just on a hopeless attempt. The tool seems from 2017, so it's probably outdated, at least the info given there is, because I don't know how Steam could be convinced to consider an empty local folder as a newer version than a savefile in the cloud.
Dirt 3 Complete Edition saves Steam-only, too, so it should be comparable. But if the process is such a hassle that you also cannot retrace your steps well, then I consider it not worth the hassle and will just leave some zero files in the cloud.

[Yujah]

Originally posted by Dowlphwin:

But if the process is such a hassle that you also cannot retrace your steps well, then I consider it not worth the hassle and will just leave some zero files in the cloud.

Definitely fair enough but note, the hassle was pre tool: you need only the compiled "SteamCloudFileManager" from the linked-to GitHub "Release.zip"; do not need to edit (or read...) anything additionally.

For example with again Dirt 3 I with Steam running start the tool, enter 321040 (the Dirt 3 AppID), select all files, and hit "Delete". That's it (but do again note that you may need to log out and back in to e.g. that remotestorage webview to be shown such).

[Dowlphwin]

Originally posted by Yujah:

Definitely fair enough but note, the hassle was pre tool: you need only the compiled "SteamCloudFileManager" from the linked-to GitHub "Release.zip"; do not need to edit (or read...) anything additionally.

For example with again Dirt 3 I with Steam running start the tool, enter 321040 (the Dirt 3 AppID), select all files, and hit "Delete". That's it (but do again note that you may need to log out and back in to e.g. that remotestorage webview to be shown such).

I finally convinced myself to give it a try (before the Steam client ceases to work on older OSs) and it worked. Some games immediately, others showed a cloud conflict first and then I had to run the game manually to decide which version to keep.
Thank you!