As an avid PC gamer who has been using Steam for over 5 years, I have accumulated hundreds of hours of game progress across various titles. However, as we all know, technology can fail us when we least expect it. I learned this the hard way when my hard drive crashed and I lost all my local game save files.
Fortunately, Steam offers cloud saving for many games which uploads your save files to Steam’s servers. This allows you to download those cloud saves to restore your progress in case something happens to your local save files. In this guide, I’ll walk you through exactly how to download, back up, and restore cloud game saves on Steam.
Table of Contents
Checking If a Game Supports Steam Cloud Saves
The first thing you need to do is check if the game you want to restore save files for actually supports Steam Cloud saving. Here’s how:
- Open your Steam Library and right-click on the game
- Select Properties
- Select the Updates tab
- Check if there is a checkmark next to Steam Cloud
If there is a checkmark, then the game does support cloud saving through Steam. If not, then unfortunately the process outlined in this guide will not work.
Downloading Steam Cloud Game Saves
If the game does support cloud saves, here are the steps to download and back up your save files:
- Close the game fully if you have it open
- Open the Steam application
- Click Steam > Settings in the top left
- Select the Cloud tab
- Under the game you want, click the Download button
- This will save the cloud files locally to your PC
- Browse to the save file location:
- For most games this will be under Steam\userdata\\\remote
- Copy the save files to a safe backup location
- I recommend an external hard drive or cloud storage
And that’s it! You now have a local copy of your Steam cloud game save files.
Restoring Cloud Game Saves
If you ever need to restore your save files from your backup, follow these steps:
- First, make sure Steam Cloud sync is disabled for the game:
- In Steam, right-click game > Properties > Updates tab > uncheck Steam Cloud
- Close the game fully if open
- Browse to where your game save files are stored locally:
- Default location is the same path shown in Step 6 above
- Delete any existing game save files already there
- Backup existing files first if you want to preserve your new progress
- Copy your backup save files to this game save location
- Re-enable Steam Cloud sync for the game
- Launch the game through Steam
Once you load up the game, it should now read your restored save file data rather than creating a new game.
Important: Make sure Steam Cloud sync is disabled before overwriting local files and only re-enabled after. Otherwise, Steam may automatically re-sync the cloud files and overwrite your restored local save.
What To Do If Cloud Saves Are Out of Date
Sometimes even with cloud saving enabled, your online saves may not be fully up to date with your last local session. This can happen if you lost your local files before Steam had a chance to fully sync up to the cloud.
In this case, you can try finding the save files in the Steam cloud folder and look by edit date to see if an older version exists you can restore from before your local files were lost.
The default location for these files is:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\\\remote
Check the “date modified” on files in this folder and compare to when your hard drive failure/data loss happened. If you see save files edited shortly before, download those to attempt a partial restore of progress.
Preventing Data Loss in the Future
Losing game progress due to hardware failures, corruption, or deletions is extremely frustrating. Here a few pro tips to secure and backup your game data:
- Use a surge protector to prevent electrical damage
- Install games on a separate storage drive from Windows
- Perform regular file backups with software like GameSave Manager
- Manually back up saves to external media on a periodic basis
- Enable Steam Cloud sync whenever possible
Following best practices for backing up important computer files can save you from this headache in the future.
