How to easily transfer Balatro save files from Gamepass to Steam

I couldn't find how to do this anywhere else, so I went searching for ways to do it and found the solution for me ;) Maybe even for you! It's really easy, gamepass just saves the savefiles in a different folder, with different filenames but all the files are there, you just gotta find which file to rename as which.

DISCLAIMER and Introduction

I started playing Balatro in Gamepass and after playing for a bit I decided to get it on Steam so I could play on steamdeck, but quickly found out that my save was very valuable since I already had played for nearly 20h on Gamepass.
This is a guide that I thought of creating because I couldn't find any other solution for bringing my gamepass savefile to steam, upon searching for clues on how to do it in any way, I stumbled upon a solution that worked for me, so it could not work for you, but I hope it does :)

I should add that this guide only serves the purpose of transfering savefiles specifically FROM Gamepass TO Steam, not the other way around, which requires information about Gamepass savefile logic, and nobody really understands it.

References

Watching and reading these references will help you better understand the guide and possibly find your solution, but the guide also covers most of what is said on these references.

Zixye a écrit :

"Backing up your save file and how it can benefit you" Guide.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3252426586

Helped me understand the savefile structure and begin to look towards how to find the Gamepass savefiles location.

AarohanTechsol Youtube Channel a écrit :

"Where Is The Save Game Files Located For Gamepass Users On PC"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUDSzZg0ZI4

This is a quick video showing where to find the gamepass savefiles and suggesting you could rename the files to match the games savefolder structure in Stargate.

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Now lets see how the guide works

Savefiles locations (Gamepass and Steam)

First we gotta find where the savefiles are, starting with steam that is the easiest, and then gamepass.

ATTENTION: You will have to substitute all the notations in brackets with your system's information

Steam

You can find the Steam save files for Balatro in:

[YourMainDrive]:\Users\[YourWindowsUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Balatro\

Gamepass

The Gamepass save files location for Balatro is a bit more tricky but I'll give my best to explain.

[YourMainDrive]:\Users\[YourWindowsUsername]\AppData\Local\Packages\PlayStack.Balatro_[SomeSerialCode]\SystemAppData\wgs\[FirstLevelFolder]\[SecondLevelFolder]

Next we'll go over understanding both of those folders structures.

Observing File Structures and Names

Steam Balatro Savefile (Target Transfer Folder)

We can see that Balatro has some folders (2 on mine, yours might be different depending on the amount of Profiles you have) and some files, notice their dates, times and sizes.
Balatro has the capacity (through seeing it in the ingame Profile page) for 3 profiles, and you will notice that this matches the file structure on steam, with folders for how many profiles you have. I have two profiles (one that I copied from gamepass) so it shows folders "1" and "2" in the image below.

I don't recommend messing with the "settings.jkr" or the "steam_autocloud.vdf" file, the options might be different between platforms and it could break your savefile.

Inside one of the profile folders you will find three files, those are the save files from Steam (meta.jkr, profile.jkr and save.jkr).

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Gamepass Balatro Savefile (Origin Transfer Folder)

In gamepass everything is a little different, but the youtube video that I referenced in the beginning gives us a clue about that. Lets break down each location in the gamepass savefile folder, as those could be different from what I'm showing you.

PlayStack.Balatro folder

The first important folder is inside this location "[YourWindowsUserFolder]\AppData\Local\Packages" where you will search for any folder referencing "PlayStack" or "Balatro". My folder name was "PlayStack.Balatro_3wcqaesafpzfy" but I can't be sure that every system will have that same name and alphanumeric code so look it up on your folder.

In there you will look for the "SystemAppData" folder

SystemAppData folder

In this folder you should find two folders, the one that matters to us is "wgs"

wgs folder

This is where everything starts getting a bit confusing, here you could find several folders with alphanumeric names, the "t" folder does not seem important to us. Open one of the alphanumeric folders (maybe the latest) and try to find this next structure below inside it.

First Level Folder

This folder should have a "container.index" file and some folders (2 for me but could be more or less for you), lets open these and check for this next structure below.

Second Level Folder

Opening one of these folders I found these five files, including another file called "container.209" that seems to be a file from Gamepass itself, not from the save.
Now lets compare the files from this folder with the files from the Steam location:

Steam:
Gamepass:

We gotta match Steam file structure, since its the target and the files that are not identified are on the Gamepass savefile structure.
Notice that Steam has 2 files with size 2kb in my example (most likely will be different from yours) and 1 file with 11kb. Remember also the "settings.jkr" file from the "Balatro" folder in Steam with a size of 1kb.
Since Gamepass has 4 files and also the "container.206" file (that is not important to us), we can then suppose:

The 4 files in Gamepass match the 4 files from Steam in some way with different names and locations

Copying over from Gamepass to Steam and Renaming

Before this step I recommend you to make a backup for the Steam save folder, so if anything goes wrong you still have the initial state saved. Maybe copy the whole "Balatro" folder from Steam paste and rename it with "BACKUP-" starting the folder name.

With that understanding from the last section we will copy over the 4 files with alphanumeric names from Gamepass into a new profile folder. Remember we can only have 3 profiles folders with names from "1" to "3", in my case I had one folder called "1", so I created a new folder named "2" in my Steam savefile location.
Inside that "2" folder I pasted the four files with alphanumeric names I got from Gamepass.
The objective now is try to match the files from Gamepass to the three files that are in Steam, so we gotta rename the alphanumeric files to "meta.jkr", "profile.jkr" and "save.jkr"

Some tips:

• The biggest file most likely will be "save.jkr" file
  
• The "profile.jkr" file seems to update every time you open the game if you don't play any rounds, but not the others (they just update if you play), so you can use this to locate yours on the Gamepass version.
  
• The "meta.jkr" file might require some testing and renaming.

Test and Rename

Even though this is already kind of a big guide (sorry for that) it's not a pinpoint solution, so we gotta do some testing to achieve our goal.
First is important to check in the Gamepass Version of Balatro the Profile and Colletions screens to be able to compare with the transfered Steam save. Those two screens says to us what is our progress, so if it worked, it should show exactly the same information in both screens between Gamepass and Steam versions.

If you don't see the same information, that means one or more of the alphanumeric files you renamed is not with the right name, so you gotta rename it again to match the files.

Some tips for understanding which file could mean which info ingame:

• The "save.jkr" file seems to relate with information in the Collections screen, since it is the biggest, and it increases the more you unlock.
  
• The "profile.jkr" file seems to relate with information in the Profiles screen, Wins, Challenges, etc. Its size seems to not change much with anything.
  
• The "meta.jkr" file is not clear for me what it relates to, and its size seems to not change much with anything as well.

Cloudsync

It's important to be careful with Cloudsync from Steam so it doesn't overwrite or delete the transfered files, but in my experience I had no issues with that, the added profile folder actually was perfectly synced in the cloud, and I could load my transfered save in other Steam devices.

I hope this helps you

Thank you for the attention! This guide took some hours to make, but I'm open to criticism and suggestions on how to make it better.
I sincerely hope this works for all of you and help you port your saves between devices and platforms. If you need any help understanding, I'll be on the comments.

Cheers!

[MiguelinDS]

I just had to do some switching to get the names right. Thank you so much! :)

[atempel]

@MiguelinDS I think you can try to rename the files you copied over from gamepass, maybe you selected a name for the wrong file, possibly between meta.jkr and profile.jkr (try swapping the name of those two files)

[MiguelinDS]

Not too sure why, I beat a run and it isn´t loading. A shame, but I might just keep going like this. Anyways, thanks! I gotta say it´s strange, considering I could see my original file once I was about to switch profiles, but once I loaded in, a fresh new one loaded. But don´t wanna bother you any further. Good job!

[MiguelinDS]

That could work. Something I am thinking could happen (which I doubt, but you never know) is that since my file is also named "P1" (due to me never renaming it on gamepass), the data might be rewritten by the one named in the actual Profile 1 which is named P1. But I don´t know if that makes sense. I´ll finish a game and see.

[atempel]

Hey @MiguelinDS! I'm really glad the guide helped you!
For the question you had, the Steam profile page at the end should look exactly the same as the gamepass profile. One thing you can try is to start and finish one game after copying the files and renaming, that way the game seems to "register" the changes, you probably will even get Steam Achievements for the unlocks you copied over.

[MiguelinDS]

Thank you OP! This has definetly been very helpful for me and others as well! I have a question tho, is my profile supposed to look borderline empty when I launch it from Steam? I assume it is because it´s not loading everything I´ve unlocked from my Gamepass experience, but just wanted to know. Thanks!

[Mate]

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[san0va]

@atempel indeed, the effort required might not pay off in the end, thanks for the reply!

[atempel]

@sanOva, as mentioned in the guide, this process only works for transfering from Gamepass to Steam, as you said as well, gamepass savefile structure is not human-friendly. You could tinker with the files after creating a new clean save on Balatro in Gamepass and trying to replace the gamepass save files with the steam save files renaming them, but that is will be made completely blind just by chance. To be honest, the chance to make this work is very slim but possible, imagine that if there are 3 files to replace, that would be 3x3x3 possibilities (27 options where just one is right). You can try it :) but there's no certainty it will work, the content of the files might be different enough that there's no way it would work (gamepass can be unable to read steam save files).

[san0va]

Looking for a reverse of this process: transferring my steam save to gamepass PC. I tinkered with it a little bit but it seems I'm not matching the file structure correctly. The nomenclature on the gamepass PC side isn't as human-readable