EDIT

[The Watcher]

...

[Sasori Kigaru]

As nice as steam cloud is, wouldn't you feel a bit jaded if you were releasing something and the store you were releasing it in essentially told you "Hey, you need to use OUR stuff if you want to sell your things in here." I mean what if I want to use some other cloud saving system? What if I felt my game is best experienced without cloud saving at all? What if I wanted to use my own cloud saving system in house?

This to me is why not having it mandatory makes sense.

[Azure Fang]

Aside from the general ill-will that would come from forcing developers to integrate features that they might not want and potentially be forced to run multiple codebases if they launch on multiple platforms, there are examples of games where cloud save could be disastrous. Case in point: Starbound.

Starbound's save system consists of a player file for each character you create, a ship file for each character, a shared universe file, a shared universe flag file, and one file per planet visited. Let's say a user had progress in their universe and launched their Steam profile at a friend's house and said friend also had their own universe. All of the friend's game progress (universe flags) has just been overwritten, any planet the two might have coincidentally visited (planet files) has been overwritten, and all they have left are the characters with permanently desynced quests that can never be completed because they rely on universe flags that have been changed. And that's not even adding mod changes into the mix which could crash entire planets and change the layout of the universe. If Chucklefish wanted cloud (and they initially did but couldn't manage it with how they implemented the universe system), they would have had to completely rewrite multiple game systems to accommodate.

Features you think should be ubiquitous aren't as perfect as you might think.

[Sasori Kigaru]

Originally posted by Sanity Clause:

Originally posted by Sasori Kigaru:

As nice as steam cloud is, wouldn't you feel a bit jaded if you were releasing something and the store you were releasing it in essentially told you "Hey, you need to use OUR stuff if you want to sell your things in here." I mean what if I want to use some other cloud saving system? What if I felt my game is best experienced without cloud saving at all? What if I wanted to use my own cloud saving system in house?

This to me is why not having it mandatory makes sense.

No, why would I be? What other cloud saving system in house exist? Why would it not work with Steam Cloud?

How is no cloud saves better experience?? 🙄

The questions are more so rhetorical and are meant to showcase how a developer (or a creator of any sort) would not appreciate being forced to implement something in order to sell their product in a popular storefront.

Now if you personally, don't mind being forced to put someone else's software (or whatever equivalent) in order to sell your product at a popular storefront then by all means. You do you.

[Ogami]

Some games just cant support Steam Cloud because of the file structure of their games.
Good example, one of my favorite games, "7 Days To Die" does not support cloud saves for the simple reason that the character and save files are integrated into the world data and a single "save" would be like half the size of the complete game, like 5-6 GB.
I doubt many people would enjoy waiting for the upload of 6 GB of save file to finish every time they close the game.
Other games have other technical limitations that make cloud saves not a feasible option.

Dont get me wrong, i am happy about each game that supports cloud saves but i also can understand why its not something you should force on developers.

[MonkehMaster]

no thanks, steam cloud or cloud saving in general causes more issues, than its worth using (ruining save files as a common complaint example).

not to mention, save on wasted data (for those with caps).

i can do my own saving, transfering of saves (if i ever even need to) by myself.

[eram]

i turn it off globally and only turn it on per game if it needs it.. never found a game that needs it when single pc gaming.

[eram]

most people i guess dont use more than 1 pc to play the same game. mandatory requirement is not needed. in fact off by default would be better.

[Mad Scientist]

Personal desire is not a reason to make something mandatory.

You can choose your own game save folder and back it up to a cloud service if you wish, but there is zero logical reason to make it mandatory to use steams cloud service. There's a decent amount of games as well where more than just a regular old save file would be used; world files, which can be several GBs at the least.

You can also manually save and use a usb stick if you're changing locations, if using a cloud service willing to host your files isn't good enough or wont store as much as you desire. There's a point of time where if you want something enough, you're gonna have to pay a price to get it.

Also "its current year" is usually never a reason to do something or make something mandatory.

[eram]

Originally posted by Sanity Clause:

Originally posted by eram:

most people i guess dont use more than 1 pc to play the same game. mandatory requirement is not needed. in fact off by default would be better.

I dunno, ValvE is trying to push a certain handheld hardware...

Originally posted by Mad Scientist:

Personal desire is not a reason to make something mandatory.

You can choose your own game save folder and back it up to a cloud service if you wish, but there is zero logical reason to make it mandatory to use steams cloud service. There's a decent amount of games as well where more than just a regular old save file would be used; world files, which can be several GBs at the least.

You can also manually save and use a usb stick if you're changing locations, if using a cloud service willing to host your files isn't good enough or wont store as much as you desire. There's a point of time where if you want something enough, you're gonna have to pay a price to get it.

Also "its current year" is usually never a reason to do something or make something mandatory.

Smells like a troll post but anyways, Steam Cloud is already available and free since 1982.

while steamdeck is extremely popular it makes up a small % of the userbase and even then some of them are not using steam cloud for all games.

[Animus]

Forcing a Dev to implement something they may not have interest or experience implementing, only serves to potentially alienate said Dev from the platform.

[Mad Scientist]

Originally posted by Sanity Clause:

Smells like a troll post but anyways, Steam Cloud is already available and free since 1982.

Steam Cloud was released in 2009 and Steam was released in September 2003.