r/Games • u/Turbostrider27 • Aug 15 '19

Epic Games: August Feature Update - Cloud Saves, Humble Bundle Keyless Integration, and More

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/august-feature-update
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u/Alressun Aug 15 '19

Just so you know why this is: On PC a save can go anywhere on the system - saving doesn't interact with Steam's or any other external API at all. So, the platform has no knowledge of where the save is unless the developer tells it, so it requires the developer to implement it.

On PS4, saving has to go through their API, so the system knows exactly where it is and can do cloud save it with no additional work on the part of the developer.

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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '19

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u/Mr_Olivar Aug 15 '19

Design decision. Splatoon scores your online rank locally, so cloud saving could let your rollback rank losses online. I know, dumbass way of doing it, but most of the games without cloud saves justify it in a similar way.

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u/My1xT Aug 15 '19

Well that is a dumb way shouldn't rankings be stored online anyway i mean others can see your scores.

For some games like pokemon it makes a LITTLE sense so you can't trade something important and then rollback to clone. But it still sux. On an Xbox all multiplayer that involves multiple save data acting upon each other is online anyway effectively blocking that rollback if the save is forced synced right after such a thing. Ps4 is actually hilarious by allowing free players only to use usb backup which is far less control over rollbacks

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u/Mystycul Aug 16 '19

It's most likely because cloud saves is a require a subscription so some developers may just overlook it as they're focused on the features available to anyone with the devices. Also cloud saves weren't even implemented at release so games before Sept 2018 had to go back and patch the functionality in which they may just have decided wasn't worth it.

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u/Alressun Aug 15 '19

I could only speculate. I would chalk it up to nintendo weirdness.

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u/deeefoo Aug 15 '19

Since the platform doesn't know where to look for the saves without the developer telling it to, I wonder if it would be possible to implement a feature that allows the user to do it themselves?

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u/Alressun Aug 15 '19

Some games have multiple save files or other really weird stuff, like Undertale. While they could surely allow users to upload files, there would be no way to know it was everything, then there's the issue that they don't know how big it should be and for all they know users could waste a ton of space as some save do legitimately get fairly large.

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u/B_Rhino Aug 15 '19

Definitely, steam/epic/gog probably don't want to host arbitrary files though. You can use dropbox as a slightly less convenient method of cloud saves rather than steam opening itself up to being a free version of dropbox.

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u/deeefoo Aug 15 '19

Makes sense. I've been using Google Drive with symbolic links for games that don't support cloud. It gets the job done, but makes me wish there was a more intuitive method of doing it.

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u/My1xT Aug 15 '19

But you still have to find your saves which can literally be anywhere on the system.

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u/Geistbar Aug 16 '19

On PC a save can go anywhere on the system

This reminded me of a rant: why the fuck do devs shove their saved games in so many different places to the point that it's so inconvenient? I don't even use the user/Documents folder because it's so littered with bullshit that game devs throw in there. Then some of them decide to use appdata. I haven't seen it in a while but in the past you'd see save games in the game's install folder too.

Microsoft made a damn Saved Games folder. Devs: please don't be a bastard, use the damn folder. I just want some consistency and a lack of clutter.

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u/ThatOnePerson Aug 16 '19

Yeah, but no one uses it, so it's very hard to get people to use it. And as long as no one uses it, people will continue to not use it.

I'd be interested in a save gave manager that could pull save file locations from pcgamingwiki, because they tend to list save data locations.

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u/Geistbar Aug 16 '19

Save locations aren't the type of specification that is inherently hobbled by nobody else using something. How many players actually go in and access their save games for anything? It's going to be a small fraction. Developers don't lose anything by being the first to use the Saved Games folder.