Steam Family Save Transfers

[Rocket Wonder]

So my husband and I share the same machine and until somewhat recently the same steam account as well. This has worked well for years, but I recently created a new account to use as a more "public" account (We keep the friends list on his to people we know IRL). This has also bee pretty cool, having become more active in some public Discords where being a bit less stingy with an account is useful for playing stuff like Lethal Company.

However, I have come across an issue regarding saves and am coming here after looking around for solutions. In some games, like Deep Rock Galactic or Risk of Rain Returns, there are local saves that are tied to the steam account playing the game. I would like to play these on the other account, and while they work just fine I am back at square one in terms of progress. I have only been able to find posts online pointing towards "normal" save files, as it were, and not wherever the other account's saves may be. Ideally I could just copy existing local saves around, which I imagine I could do easily with RoRR (maybe less so with DRG because of the online nature of its progression?), but I just haven't been able to actually find out where to put said saves. If shuffling saves doesn't work I could always just edit the saves or even simply cheat (not like I haven't already played the game :P) but those still require me knowing where the save file is (maybe not cheating, but I can't just throw cheat engine at every game, and that would start to defeat the point of saving time I think).

I'm not all that technical, I wouldn't know how to go in and like, find out what files a particular program is calling for or probably how to even interpret that data if I could get it.

Update 4 hours later:
Of the two games of primary concern (DRG and RORR), I have SUCCESSFULLY transferred DRG save data! In the existing save directory, a /new/ set of files is created using the second account's Steam UID. Simply copying the saves with more progress, naming them after the new account's saves (Namely, changing the UID in the filename) will cause DRG to load the altered save on the new account. Risk of Rain Returns continues to pose an issue. There is only one save Steam's userdata path, the original save. However, in AppData/Roaming/Risk_of_Rain_Returns, there is another file called [UID]_localsave.json. This is also tied to the original account. I suspect making progress with the new account will generate a new local save, I will have to test that once I am home.

Update 6 hours later:
Progressing in RORR did indeed make another save with a Steam UID discriminator. Behaves as expected when old file is renamed to replace it. Tomorrow I will see if this is a generally applicable solution for games with local saves differentiated by Steam account.

[nullable]

Well "saves" aren't a generic standardized thing. So while there are save game editors, they're often game specific, or tied to a family of games that use the same underlying technologies.

If a save is tied to an account, and/or progress or aspects of it are managed remotely on servers the developer operates that can limit your options. They're not going to be keen on what amounts to cheating or hacking based on their design/progress tracking scheme. And it's probably going to be a tough row to hoe to get them to duplicate or move data on their servers. But that's going to be an issue game by game.

Mostly you can just copy save files, but again it's not always going to be universal so it's always going to be something to address game by game.

Save game locations and details about moving them around is also going to vary game by game, and you'll just have to research and use the existing knowledge about a game's save.

One utility you might look into is https://www.gamesave-manager.com/ if you just want to back up and restore saves, that works pretty well. I use it to backup saves and store them in dropbox in case my SSD dies or something, and a game doesn't support cloud saves.

[ReBoot]

Check PCGamingWiki, it tells you where to put saves

[Rocket Wonder]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Check PCGamingWiki, it tells you where to put saves

The issue so far hasn't been that I can't locate a save, it's that the save appears to be the wrong one (The save is for the original account, not this one). I suppose it is /possible/ that Steam is swapping out every save with the other account's from the cloud. I will have to test that.

[Rocket Wonder]

Originally posted by nullable:

Well "saves" aren't a generic standardized thing. So while there are save game editors, they're often game specific, or tied to a family of games that use the same underlying technologies.

If a save is tied to an account, and/or progress or aspects of it are managed remotely on servers the developer operates that can limit your options. They're not going to be keen on what amounts to cheating or hacking based on their design/progress tracking scheme. And it's probably going to be a tough row to hoe to get them to duplicate or move data on their servers. But that's going to be an issue game by game.

Mostly you can just copy save files, but again it's not always going to be universal so it's always going to be something to address game by game.

Save game locations and details about moving them around is also going to vary game by game, and you'll just have to research and use the existing knowledge about a game's save.

One utility you might look into is https://www.gamesave-manager.com/ if you just want to back up and restore saves, that works pretty well. I use it to backup saves and store them in dropbox in case my SSD dies or something, and a game doesn't support cloud saves.

Yeah I figure that some games I will just have to put up with but my two examples specifically use local data. At least, I know that with DRG there is indeed a local save and that people have been able to move their XBone or Microsoft Store files to steam successfully. I am not sure how it would handle something like DLC but that is presumably account bound and not save bound. I am not looking to back up save data but transfer to this account, again mostly with games I already know have local saves.

I will look into this gamesave site though it seems useful outside of this issue :P

[Rocket Wonder]

"So let me rephrase for you. Use save game manager to collect the saves you want transfer into an archive, transfer the archive to the new system, and then use save game manager to restore that archive on the new PC where it will put the data back where it needs to go. Apologies for the confusion."

There is only the one PC involved, which is why this has been a bit of a headache. We're fine with just the one machine, we don't usually actually play games together, and when we do it's either local co-op like Rain World or older games like Quake that will run on any old thing.

Actually, with DRG I discovered that there actually /is/ a second set of saves, denoted by Steam's UID. I saw this new post while I was looking into a way to alter DRG's .sav file. I am looking to see if other games (or Steam itself) is actually dividing save data with UID discriminators like filename prefixes or folder names.


Edited because paring down the double quote resulted in weird formatting