For the love of God, please let us manually edit Steam cloud saves

[e+]

It honestly gets soooo annoying having to go through multiple games and it's a confusing and tedious process to trick Steam cloud into not downloading the same savegames which I just manually deleted from my hard drive. We need a direct way to manually remove those save files off the cloud, please.

[Pscht]

Do it while the game is running, from inside the game, maybe?

[e+]

Originally posted by Pscht:

Do it while the game is running, from inside the game, maybe?

maybe read again what "tedious and confusing" means, not every game allows you to bulk delete hundres of files and replays. Actually, very few allow to do so. Add to that a confirmation if you really want to delete said file every time and I need like an entire day to clear my age of empires replays, my various skyrim, witcher 3, kingdom come deliverance playthroughs through the game itself

[Yujah]

There's supposedly helpful info at

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3951406749565133259/?tscn=1699651594

The tool worked for me when I recently needed it to delete a whole lot of Dirt 3 cloudsaves.

[RiO]

1. Retarget the game's startup using Properties -> Set Launch Options to an empty powershell session that is just going to sit there and idle, without doing anything. E.g.
   

   pwsh -NoExit -CommandWithArgs "& {}" %command%

   (The string %command% has to be present somewhere in the launch options, so you have to mess with this to get it to work. They above runs an inline defined script with arguments, but doesn't actually do any work on those arguments. So whatever Steam decides to pass in %command% goes unused. And after it has done exactly nothing, it won't exit. I.e. the process keeps running.)
   
2. While that is running, delete the files you wanted to delete.
   
3. Close off the powershell window.
   
4. Steam runs the normal sync procedure and wipes everything you wiped; keeps everything you kept. The clouds will part to reveal the sun shining. etc. etc.

[e+]

Originally posted by RiO:

1. Retarget the game's startup using Properties -> Set Launch Options to an empty powershell session that is just going to sit there and idle, without doing anything. E.g.
   

   pwsh -NoExit -Command "Not running %command%" 

   (I think the string %command% has to be present somewhere in the launch options, so you have to mess with this to get it to work.)
   
2. While that is running, delete the files you wanted to delete.
   
3. Close off the powershell window.
   
4. Steam runs the normal sync procedure and wipes everything you wiped; keeps everything you kept. The clouds will part to reveal the sun shining. etc. etc.

yeah no bruh i am using linux, i know how to delete my save files but there are some leftovers on the cloud for which i need to perform further shenanigans inside ./local/share/steam folder, just to delete some cr*p that I no longer want on the cloud.

It's just WAY overcomplicated than it should be.

[RiO]

Originally posted by e+:

yeah no bruh i am using linux, i know how to delete my save files but there are some leftovers on the cloud for which i need to perform further shenanigans inside ./local/share/steam folder, just to delete some cr*p that I no longer want on the cloud.

It's just WAY overcomplicated than it should be.

Well; the major problem is that you have to fight Steam's synchronization and have to deal with games that a) might not offer ingame means to delete files; b) might mark files as in use, not actually allowing you to delete them; or c) might just autosave-on-close and recreate anything you deleted before the sync gets to run, putting you back at square one.

Dummy-ing out the actual game executable this way is a path of least resistance with the options that an end-user currently would have. (And if you're on Linux, then certainly you'll know how to cook up the bash equivalent, right?)


I agree that the whole thing is complete insanity and Valve really should offer better tooling for their end-users. But considering their overall laissez-faire attitude towards quality-of-life improvements not just for end-users but even for their own full-time staff, I'm inclined to believe any pining for a solution from their end is a pipe-dream at the very bestest-of-bests.

(Also; I believe that's a decent go at a personal record for most hyphens in a reasonable-sized run-on sentence. )

[Yujah]

If using Linux then my linked-to tool won't do -- but Rio's method will, after substituting e.g.

bash -c 'echo Not running %command% && read -p "Enter to continue..."'

for his pwsh command. Note that he's just making Steam believe that the game was started, then lets you delete the local saves, and has "the game" exit and therefore has Steam sync whatever changes you made locally to the Steam cloud.

[RiO]

Originally posted by Yujah:

If using Linux than my linked-to tool won't do -- but Rio's will, after substituting e.g.

bash -c 'echo Not running %command% && read -p "Enter to continue..."'

for his pwsh command. Note that he's just making Steam believe that the game was started, then lets you delete the local saves, and has "the game" exit and therefore has Steam sync whatever changes you made locally to the Steam cloud.

Yup. It actually follows, for all intents and purposes, normal procedures as-if the game itself had actually deleted the files. There's no potentially-fatal wizardry involved in trying to manually manipulate the bookkeeping files that record the state of the sync.

It's annoying; and it makes you jump a hoop; but at least it's safe. At least from the perspective of not tampering with Steam's bookkeeping and leaving the whole thing in an invalid state. (Which, yes, can happen.)
If you delete the wrong files; or don't delete all the files that are internally linked together then the game itself could still break, of course. A good example of that is a console-game style 'system save' that unbeknownst to the user might contain hard references to the files holding the individual game saves themselves. If in such a situation you delete only some of those individual files, you might break the game.

[Yujah]

"Historically" I used the "overwrite local copy of the file with zero-length file and sync" trick to delete unwanted cloud-saves but was recently glad to have found that linked tool; it uses Steamworks directly and not any "tricks". But, yes, would have to be rewritten/recompiled for Linux.

[e+]

Originally posted by Yujah:

"Historically" I used the "overwrite local copy of the file with zero-length file and sync" trick to delete unwanted cloud-saves but was recently glad to have found that linked tool; it uses Steamworks directly and not any "tricks". But, yes, would have to be rewritten/recompiled for Linux.

I am struggling with deleting some files pertaining to AoE II HD version (2013 version)
I did edit the files and deleted remotecache.vdf, however upon restart, Steam still manages to download the ones on the cloud back onto my ssd.
This has worked for other games, but strangely not for AoE II HD.

[Yujah]

Try starting the game (or use RiO's method to have Steam think it has started the game but I expect it won't be necessary) and with the game open, delete the file(s) in question or truncate to 0 bytes as say

: >/where/ever/filename

and exit the game. Steam may be kind enough to delete the cloud-copies for you when it then syncs back.

[e+]

I managed to somehow delete it. I do have some files for games that I have refunded which I do not think it is possible to completely delete, though.

[RiO]

Originally posted by e+:

I managed to somehow delete it. I do have some files for games that I have refunded which I do not think it is possible to completely delete, though.

It isn't. But storage quotas are per-game anyway.
So, who cares right?

It's not like these hold personal data or anything.
...
At least, I would hope not.

[Yujah]

Originally posted by e+:

I managed to somehow delete it

"Somehow", yes, matches my recent experiences; it's a crap-shoot. Could sort of excuse it if I were to in fact believe myself when I'd say that Steam leaves it up to the developer if/how to manage cloud-saves, and that with the game already perfectly capable of offering management in-game, it therefore doesn't want the enable the end-user to interfere...

... but then you have (many) games such as Dirt 3, ported from old GFWL which used to manage its saves but does no longer, and that therefore necesitate a user be able to interfere manually to e.g. delete old "profiles", and I do not believe myself anymore.

It's a frustrating mess and I swear around all of it every time I have to do this ♥♥♥♥ manually. Steam should definitely provide for better tools to manage cloud-saves.

[e+]

Originally posted by RiO:

Originally posted by e+:

I managed to somehow delete it. I do have some files for games that I have refunded which I do not think it is possible to completely delete, though.

It isn't. But storage quotas are per-game anyway.
So, who cares right?

It's not like these hold personal data or anything.
...
At least, I would hope not.

well, there are also steambrowser history files on the cloud from what I see but luckily that one is cr*p as well so I've never really used it much.