Basic steam question

[Craig234]

I should know this, how do you delete the local copy of a Steam game but save your game saves?

If you 'delete all local content', does that delete game samves also?

Do you manually copy them first to some backup location?

 

[BlueWeasel]

The majority of game saves aren't stored with in the Steam folder, so they aren't deleted when you remove the game from Steam.

Game Save Manager is awesome, by the way.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

 

[Craig234]

The majority of game saves aren't stored with in the Steam folder, so they aren't deleted when you remove the game from Steam.

Game Save Manager is awesome, by the way.
http://www.gamesave-manager.com/

Is it a manual search for them to see if they are? If the Steam game is re-installed does it automacially find the old save games?

 

[surfsatwerk]

Is it a manual search for them to see if they are? If the Steam game is re-installed does it automacially find the old save games?

This is my experience.

 

[Craig234]

OK. It'd be nice to have confirmation somehow the save games won't be lost...

 

[JeffMD]

craig, in most cases the saved games will be lost. They may not be deleted because uninstallers usualy leave any data created since the install process, but if you don't know how the save game structure works, and this seems to be the case, you arn't going to get them back in the right place. Some instances like windows live saved games are all but impossible to restore.

I would check out http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ posted above.

 

[Zenoth]

I changed my OS recently and had to back-up my saved games but also had to delete most of my games' files to make space in my HDD. So I just copy/pasted all the saved games folders I could find onto a DVD. Then I reinstalled Steam, downloaded all my games back (that took about a week, but it's another story) and replaced the saved games folders I backed-up in their original folder structures and paths. I had to take some desktop pictures of some of those saved games folders to memorize the folders structures and name, etc, that helps too.

So bottom line? If you're not sure, Craig, just find and manually copy/paste all your games' saves folders (or individual save files within their saves folder, whatever you prefer), then paste them back later on when needed, where they belong and it should be working. I've done it for basically 80% of my Steam library and of the games I've tested so far all my saved games work as if that OS change never occurred.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Most of the time the saves are put into the C:/users/<profile>/documents/ folder somewhere, where <profile> is your windows username, this is done so different windows users can have different save profiles.

When the game is uninstalled usually it asks if you want to remove saves/extra data, it's referring to this saved data outside of the main installation directory.

If you want to be ultra-sure you're not going to lose anything, locate the save game files and make a copy of them somewhere else, this is what I do when uninstalling. That way if the uninstaller deletes the saves without asking, or you have to format your PC for whatever reason, then you have backups.

It's worth noting that this is common behaviour, but not all games work this way, especially older ones. Some older games, and "badly" written ones sometimes put save games inside the installation directory. The good thing is save game files are usually really easy to spot.