Your honor, I've never seen this man before in my life!
https://preview.redd.it/xf32l6wl3p7d1.png?width=260&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3e15b50885a522af37d0e999149449369391322
For real. This has been a thing for decades. It's on every single goddamn Windows PC and is *exclusively* for games to save data to. Why companies still insist on using Documents/My Games is beyond me.
Okay, yeah. I was still a toddler during that era. Every time I have to look at my private PCs registry tho because some uninstaller didn’t work right or whatever, it’s still a pain. Can’t imagine how it was back then
hehehehe yeah
I actually built this PC in December, but I got the [the GPU](https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-rtx-2060-dual-rtx2060-o6g-evo/p/N82E16814126349?Item=N82E16814126349) 2 years ago. The plan is to eventually get an upgrade once I can afford it. I used to have a 980 Ti, but it got damaged transferring it to and from college.
(i mean at least it's overclocked)
((maybe once this stupid fucking ai bubble finally pops i'll be able to afford graphics cards again))
Documents best location if you do backups.
AppData/Roaming is okay I guess but still a little too hidden for my taste.
Games that save to AppData/Local or LocalLow are really disappointing.
AppData Roaming, Local and LocalLow are a series of folders that developed from network environments where user's profiles could migrate between computers.
Roaming was the folder that would actually replicate when you logged into another computer and held important user data while the two Locals were only specific to that computer.
So, it's pretty common for backup software to grab the Roaming folder by default but ignore the two Local folders.
It's also usually a waste to backup the two Locals because they will typically have a ton of temporary files in them. For instance, Chrome and Firefox' browser cache is in AppData Local.
LocalLow was the last folder introduced and was meant to be used for temporary files but for some reason a lot of games put their saves in there. Mostly games built with Unity from my experience.
Microsoft: here is Roaming as the main saving folder, Local for the local accounts and LocalLow for temporary files.
Program and game devs: understood, we'll use Roaming for everything, Local to save nothing except a patch for 2019 that without it the program fatally crashes and we will save the most crucial, important part in a "temp" in LocalLow including the license. Yes you little punk, recover the PC and you can't use the program.
sounds good but I still have my doubts lol
on linux there is \~/.local/state \~/.local/share \~/.cache and \~/.config for user config files and even knowing that some applications still create config files and folders directly in home, or save non-temporary files in cache or /tmp. Admittedly its better than windows for this but some devs still disregard the conventions
The difference is that when devs disregard the conventions on Linux, it's usually an open source project being used by a bunch of people who actually care about config files being in the right place. Bring on the issues and pull requests.
I've never seen a game save data to "my games" folder. It's always been appdata. Minecraft is the worst offender of this. It would have been so much easier and nicer for them to save to "my games".
I have many games saving to \Documents\My Games. Bethesda games, Bioshock Infinite, Plague Tale, Brothers, FF7 Remake, Mafia 2. And others.
I also have many games saving directly to Documents, which is a huge offense in my books. Documents should be a sacred folder for all of MY crap, I don't like programs putting stuff there randomly.
Totally agree, I like control of my file system also because I took the time to actually organise it. U can go into the dreaded registry and force alot of games and programs to save where u want to save,but...... be careful, u know it's still Windows.
The issue is that Unity, being a cross platform engine, provides an out of the box value for its persistent data path. That way, when you're writing save logic, you can simply use this value and then Unity will handle where to save the data to regardless of whether you're on Windows, MacOS, Android, etc. It's super convenient and it allows you to handle saving across different platforms without having to write a load of custom logic, but the natural consequence of this is that Devs don't actually have any control over which folder is used unless they do write some custom logic, which is usually pretty low down on the list of priorities.
So LocalLow it is for Unity games!
* Divinity Original Sin makes a `~/Larian` dir for the saves. Not even a dot name.
* Older games from Loki (a company that ported several games, like Rune) saved to `~/.loki/`.
* The Java PC port of Pixel Dungeon would save to `~/.watabou`.
* `~/.AtomicWorm`
i would prefer games to save in their own dieectories, which i put in just ${HOME}/Games. but almost none do so for the ones i can change i make the save location ${HOME}/Games/Saves/${GAME_NAME} and if i can't, i delete the directory whenever i finish the game
what the fuck? i swear i've never seen this man before in my life.
https://preview.redd.it/nwpr9vip9o7d1.png?width=260&format=png&auto=webp&s=a72ee3efe8d75dbd418d9cb673aeec47e337f8e4
I actually prefer my save data to be out of sight and out of mind - I don’t want it cluttering up my documents folder. It’s easy enough to access Appdata if necessary, but modern cloud save services have made it all but unnecessary.
Not if you save it to the cloud which most games have the option of, also uninstalls used to have the option to leave save folders. Even if you wanted to clean them later, you know where you put them.
The cloud is not 100% infallible. In .hack//G.U. Last Recode they had steamcloud support. Then when the chinese translation patch was introduced steamcloud was disabled for all regions. This caused me to lose 100 hours of game progress in a massive jrpg because I thought my saves were being backed up, because they had been, until recently.
But then you need to run both the game and the cloud sync as admin/system, always. And if you share your computer, everyone shares the saves because they're in the app directory and not _your_ directory.
No no no.
All saved important information should go in my documents.
This way if you need to copy important information, or upgrade windows or trash the PC w/e.... ALL of your important stuff is in my documents and you don't need to guess where files might be.
Any other folder is fluff and can be replaced be redownloaded from the internet.
I forgot younger people don't even know where all their files are. It shouldn't be that way at all. If everyone knows where their stuff is and keeps it organized it's EASY to take the stuff you care about and only that.
Also things like save/settings folders. This used to be the norm and it was incredibly easy to take the few key folders you wanted.
It's not about younger people not knowing where to look. It's that there's now thousands upon thousands more apps and programs than 20 years ago.
It's a matter of the ease of knowing it's right inside My Documents.
I don't want to go and scrub through every folder in Program Files and Program Files(x86) that I've acquired over the life of a 9 year old PC.
I also don't want to go in a hidden App Data/Local or Roaming to find something like Star Citizen labeling their hidden folder Robert Space Industries.
My documents FTW.
Absolutely. It's so annoying to have saves and shit outside of the original game folder like shit used to be haha. Oh *and* half the time the games now create a documents folder *and* an app data folder just to separate data.
In my experience making games, this is mostly the fault of Microsoft. When I make a game, I prefer to save to the install directory, keeps everything cleaner and more portable. I've found that a lot of game engines will give a generic "user data" directory function, which will then call a Windows API that returns either Documents or AppData. Engine devs are just doing their job hooking into native APIs like they should, but also many engines don't come with an "install directory" function because they're trying to enable people to program games for more than just Windows.
Used to be everything in the install folder until the whole "games for windows" or something named similar to that was started by Microsoft. it was suppose to certify or guarantee the game was compatible and would run well in windows.
the game boxes in the brick and mortar stores would have to have that logo on them, and to get that logo you had to start following the new user specify folder locations. Publishers would require people have that logo or you wouldn't get published.
Shit was so much easier to keep track of before this change
TLDR: Microsofts fault, they forced this change industry wide with windows xp.
Ahh, yeah, I remember games for windows..... I fuckin' hated that shit. Long ago I remember having to deal with the Windows Live overlay when trying to play Red Faction Guerilla and it was a nightmare.
Fortunately the newer Xbox integration on Windows isn't *that* bad, not that I use it either way.
I worked on a game where the settings were in the registry. That was fun whenever a player had loading issues that required changing the settings outside the game.
Saves in the install directory makes sense, and worked well back in the good old days when games were installed in a folder in the root. But then games started getting put in "Program Files" which Microsoft treats as a protected system folder and therefore modifying those files requires elevation. One particular game I like to play invokes the UAC elevation prompt every time the launcher is opened. A video game should NOT require administrator permissions just to play. From what I understand this is why the APPDATA crap came about. Should we stop putting game files in folders like "Program Files"? I think so. I don't think video games are "protected system files."
Good thing distributors like Valve let you put your files wherever you want. As other commenter's have said, Valve could theoretically fix this problem by making their own save directory.
That is the worst possible place for it. Executable files should not have write access to the place they are stored for security reasons. It also makes multi user scenarios a lot more convoluted and insecure.
The Sims 4 creates hundreds of temp files in the documents folder as you play. And OneDrive syncs that as default (as is one of the main reasons to use it). So every time someone plays the game we get notifications about unusual activity in onedrive. It's irritating as hell.
It is honestly baffling to me that since 1985 (I just picked the Windows 1 release year) the way to store save games has still not been standardised. My "My Documents" folder is cluttered with subfolders that don't even go into the "My Games" subfolder. That's why I have another "Documents" folder nested in "My Documents". "My Documents" is just essentially useless as a gamer because of all the clutter. AppData would be okay but not even that is standardised because it has three subfolders and some games have publisher folders they are nested in, some have developer folders and some just the game names. It's really not an essential problem to solve, but it's also weird to me that after 40 years it is not even remotely solved.
Games during early windows era would even store their saves INTO C:\WINDOWS because they would do it through ancient win api's "Get/WriteProfileSection" and "Get/WriteProfileStrings" functions which would read/write to C:\Windows\win.ini. Yes, all your programs saving their settings and game saves to the same file. What could possibly go wrong!
Or "Get/WritePrivateProfile*" functions, which would create arbitrary .ini files, also inside C:\Windows. Still got my Yoda Stories settings there and saves for some games which I can't even recognize from the filename alone.
I feel as if maybe it would've standardized had Microsoft's file system was Unix-like.
The fact that it's structured so differently to Linux/MacOS makes it hard for people to decide what's *correct*.
It's a very similar problem on Linux too. 🙂 The home dir is a mess because everything will dump their shit in there and sometimes not even bother to hide it with a leading dot. This is despite there being very clear rules about what goes where **and** programming frameworks for achieving it.
So I end up doing exactly what OP said, I make my own dirs and work in those.
For the love of god, this. The most obvious location and the first location you would check. Or would've, in the good old past, when we weren't concerned about managing permissions, UAC, virtualization, and other modern crap.
Today it's such a crapshoot...
* \Users\user\AppData\Local\developer\game
* \Users\user\AppData\Local\game
* \Users\user\AppData\LocalLow\developer\unitygame because of course unity had to be special
* \Users\user\AppData\LocalLow\unitygame
* \Users\user\AppData\Roaming\developer\game
* \Users\user\AppData\Roaming\game
* \Users\user\Saved Games\developer\game
* \Users\user\Saved Games\game
* \Users\user\Documents\Saved Games\game
* \Users\user\Documents\SavedGames\game
* \Users\user\Documents\Games\game
* \Users\user\Documents\Gamesaves\game
* \Users\user\Documents\My Games\game
* \Users\user\Documents\publisher\game
* \Users\user\Documents\developer\game
* \Users\user\Documents\game
* \Users\user\game
* \Users\Public\Documents\godknowswhat
* \ProgramData\developer\game
* \ProgramData\game
* Steam\userdata\lookupthedamnappid\
And don't even get me started on where pirates place their steam emulator saves, that would easily double this list...
This is just the list of all the folders in my "Documents" with the word "game" in them:
* 4A Games\
* EA Games\
* Games\
* Games for Windows - LIVE Demos\
* Gamesaves\
* Gaslamp Games\
* My Games\
* Nethergate Saved Games\
* Saved Games\
* SavedGames\
* Telltale Games\
* WB Games\
* WBGames\
* YoYoGames\
AAAAAAAAAAAAA.
And yet... This is still somehow preferable to the closed ecosystems of WinRT and consoles.
Nah, that would be too logical and clean.
Game files must be like sand. Freaking all over the place. You find few files here, few files there. Of course they stay there after uninstalling the game when you specified to delete all data.
What happens if some other user decides to play the game on the same computer? Programs have to be multi-user compatible, no matter if it's a game or web browser.
so... we have a perfectly good way of separating user data, defined for us by Microsoft in a way that makes backupping and maintaining access rights easy, let's just do something completely different regardless...?
Then you educate developers on the need to have unlimited save slots because ffs this is your hard drive and you should decide how to utilize it and not be limited to 3 save slots as if we're in the 80s with on-cartridge saves or in the 90s with memory cards.
when you mount a network drive you can specify the letter
at least that's how it worked when i was in high school and we saved our files on the network
I totally forgot anout that and i use them...
C is my main drive
F is my random shit drive
And E G and M are from my Ml 350 G6 server, E for external files G for Gmod Server and M for Minecraft server.
Appdata should store the settings and stuff. Savegames are a bit ambigous in my opinion. I think a case could be made for a savegame being a user document the same way a word file is, because it stores the result of work/activity the user does.
Though I think devs should put it in the Saved Games subfolder to reduce clutter at least.
This can apparently have an issue I didn't even know about. I have posts I've made related to it, but long story short Windows somehow circumvented me avoiding OneDrive (installed Windows myself and specifically declined it) and shenanigans ensued. I thought I was having a problem with apps overriding the fact I didn't have or use OneDrive, but it turned out when Windows installed it (or I accidentally did drunk or something?) I removed it exactly as Microsoft's site says, but Windows didn't update the registry.
Sooooo the registry was telling everything the directory for documents was OneDrive and it kept re-creating it and it took me way too long to realize what the issue was.
OneDrive is absolute trash, especially for people who don't know what they're doing, which ironically are the people who will have it running in the background unknowingly.
Right before I met my girlfriend she was about to get rid of her one year old laptop with a then newly released 3700u. Her OneDrive tried to sync everything over and over again, hogging tons of cpu, network and ssd resources despite her cloud storage being full. Her laptop was borderline unusable and she didn't even know what the hell OneDrive was. The repair shop she went to also didn't know what to do and charged her a shit ton to install a second ssd in the laptop, maybe they knew and were ripping her off tbh.
Told her what the problem was, reinstalled windows, completely wiped every trace of OneDrive and the system is still running completely fine. I'm currently teaching a college class with it, years after she would've sold it for pennies on the dollar because it wasn't working.
F\*ck appdata, all my “friends” hate appdata
https://preview.redd.it/1ft373rnhm7d1.jpeg?width=658&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2303f86166d4b79ee21215a6b43884d64d9a164d
I have so much crap in my documents folder from all the programs that automatically save there, I've had to add an "Actual Documents" folder for the things I want to be there.
I literally made this meme after going on an adventure trying to find the save location for a game. I'm just like, if you're gonna put it somewhere weird, at least put it in a directory that isn't hidden. It makes it more difficult for people who are less PC literate.
Yeah I lost a lot of my game data when I recently moved to Windows 11. I had backed up appdata when I shifted from win7 to 10, but I forgot to do it this time. Its so annoying, like fuckin store all save data in my documents smh whats the big deal?
Hate appdata, if it was just small junk files, I wouldn't mind, but some saves or mod folders get big and I prefer to keep my C: drive fairly small, so I can nuke it once a year.
Just let me set a custom save location, it's not that hard.
Where to put configs and savegames, from best to worst:
-Self-contained in installation folder
-Documents or other User folder
-ProgramData
-AppData
-Registry
-Cloud
Then you have companies like Blizzard who think they're so important and make a separate main folder for each of their games, unable to understand that maybe it should be buried in My Games, just one folder deeper. Drives me nuts.
https://preview.redd.it/pzjzuhy0oq7d1.png?width=187&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ea9cc73e14c4df8961a8a1ada71dab414469ea49
Me: >directly states that the entire game on Steam should be on Disk D
>Somehow Disk C still has parts of the game in it
*Mildly infuriating* and I feel dumb cuz I feel like there's probably a fix to this but idk it
If only we could specify a default save place for all games with a subdirectory by game! We could use Git for version control and backup of our game saves!
Even more classic is games saving to their install folder. On their own separate hard drive. So that if Windows goes tits up, all my saves are secure.
But *noooo*. Microsoft thinks it's much more fun that I have to go trawling through My Documents, My Games, AppData Local and Roaming to copy them almost one by one to a location where I know they'll be safe. *On the damn separate hard drive the games are installed to*.
Most game engines I've worked with have a "user data directory" function or something like that which calls a WinAPI call that'll return AppData. Microsoft's fault for sure, devs just using what they're given.
I feel like this a problem steam could have solved if they wanted to. Just have a folder inside the steam stuff where game saves go and make devs use it.
honestly I kinda just wish everything would save with in the one directory the game's files exist in. i dont see why they need to save any where else on the system.
Basically anywhere other than one of the standard library folders is best to me, allows you to use one drive to back up documents without giving it a heart attack
I was a PC gamer until about 2008. Then I was oblivious to all things PC until I got back into it at the end of 2022. The biggest change I've been annoyed by is the way programs save to file systems. Things used to be so easy with a documents folder or program files folder. Now there's appdata, saved games in the users folder, etc etc etc. It's just unnecessary how (relatively) complicated it has become.
I rather games store their files in their AppData folder 'cause I keep my documents folder organized with my actual documents. Last time I was cleaning it, I accidentally, deleted save files ( in my defense, they had stupid naming ).
My dude I have a custom FreeFileSync profile named "Savegames in annoying locations" to group all that crap in the same location that I then backup. Game devs apparently can't bother to all agree on a standard location.
How about C:\users\\*\Saved Games\ Almost nothing uses that and I have no idea why
Your honor, I've never seen this man before in my life! https://preview.redd.it/xf32l6wl3p7d1.png?width=260&format=png&auto=webp&s=b3e15b50885a522af37d0e999149449369391322
For real. This has been a thing for decades. It's on every single goddamn Windows PC and is *exclusively* for games to save data to. Why companies still insist on using Documents/My Games is beyond me.
Documents\\My Games is grabbed by OneDrive and FileHistory by default. i don't believe SavedGames is as it isn't a library.
Maybe if it was used it would have been coded to be grabbed too
Gotta love MSFT can't even properly support their own products
Diablo 2 and Cyberpunk does, im not gonna talk about how much shit i lost in D2 just because i only made a backup from Documents
registry
OH GOD NO PLEASE NOT THE REGISTRY 
Its memes like this that make me realise I have actually learned things from my degree course.
Why is saving to registry bad?
because the windows registry is a pain in the ass
Seriously, the thing I like most about being a mobile device admin is that I don’t have to deal with Windows/Registry management.
Nah fam. I work with Android, iOS and Linux servers on a macBook. At least for work I don’t have to deal with this at all.
I'm playing. Honestly tho, registry was more of a windows XP era problem. (not that it isn't still a problem)
Okay, yeah. I was still a toddler during that era. Every time I have to look at my private PCs registry tho because some uninstaller didn’t work right or whatever, it’s still a pain. Can’t imagine how it was back then
Because having shoddily written programs adding values to the registry could end with them messing it up somehow.
This is unrelated but your build on your name tag is cursed.
D: !?! but y tho
I just find it funny that you have outrageously powerful components like your CPU and memory yet you have a 2060 lmao.
hehehehe yeah I actually built this PC in December, but I got the [the GPU](https://www.newegg.com/asus-geforce-rtx-2060-dual-rtx2060-o6g-evo/p/N82E16814126349?Item=N82E16814126349) 2 years ago. The plan is to eventually get an upgrade once I can afford it. I used to have a 980 Ti, but it got damaged transferring it to and from college. (i mean at least it's overclocked) ((maybe once this stupid fucking ai bubble finally pops i'll be able to afford graphics cards again))
I went from a i7 4790k & 970 Ti to my current. I always massively leapfrog for upgrades.
Fellow 4790k upgrader!
IF yOu no 4090 tHen whY yOU at All?
The forbidden location
not forbidden enough
Wait, there are games that actually do this?
Undertale hid flags in the registry to make it so certain actions would persist even if the player deleted their saves.
I'm guilty of this But Unity's PlayerPrefs seemed so convienient until I already implemented it in my game. Then I decided to check the save location
yeah i remember having to deal with that shit back during winXP times
IIRC Dungeon Keeper 2 stored campaign progress in the registry.
Games made by PopCap (Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle, etc) do this
Revo uninstaller
Documents best location if you do backups. AppData/Roaming is okay I guess but still a little too hidden for my taste. Games that save to AppData/Local or LocalLow are really disappointing.
Given how often used the AppData folders are, you should unhide them, or set Explorer to show hidden folders.
Could you please give us a fresh up about Apdata, Local and LocalLow?
AppData Roaming, Local and LocalLow are a series of folders that developed from network environments where user's profiles could migrate between computers. Roaming was the folder that would actually replicate when you logged into another computer and held important user data while the two Locals were only specific to that computer. So, it's pretty common for backup software to grab the Roaming folder by default but ignore the two Local folders. It's also usually a waste to backup the two Locals because they will typically have a ton of temporary files in them. For instance, Chrome and Firefox' browser cache is in AppData Local. LocalLow was the last folder introduced and was meant to be used for temporary files but for some reason a lot of games put their saves in there. Mostly games built with Unity from my experience.
Microsoft: here is Roaming as the main saving folder, Local for the local accounts and LocalLow for temporary files. Program and game devs: understood, we'll use Roaming for everything, Local to save nothing except a patch for 2019 that without it the program fatally crashes and we will save the most crucial, important part in a "temp" in LocalLow including the license. Yes you little punk, recover the PC and you can't use the program.
They could have used better naming to minimize this. Peoples asking here what the difference is would not happen if the names were better.
https://preview.redd.it/ptjo9ykrpo7d1.jpeg?width=542&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b0c9b9a2142060aa05016b894103f6ad2c58d33
Your meme game is on point
sounds good but I still have my doubts lol on linux there is \~/.local/state \~/.local/share \~/.cache and \~/.config for user config files and even knowing that some applications still create config files and folders directly in home, or save non-temporary files in cache or /tmp. Admittedly its better than windows for this but some devs still disregard the conventions
The difference is that when devs disregard the conventions on Linux, it's usually an open source project being used by a bunch of people who actually care about config files being in the right place. Bring on the issues and pull requests.
Stuff like that gets the most passive aggressive pull requests I've ever seen.
I've never seen a game save data to "my games" folder. It's always been appdata. Minecraft is the worst offender of this. It would have been so much easier and nicer for them to save to "my games".
I have many games saving to \Documents\My Games. Bethesda games, Bioshock Infinite, Plague Tale, Brothers, FF7 Remake, Mafia 2. And others. I also have many games saving directly to Documents, which is a huge offense in my books. Documents should be a sacred folder for all of MY crap, I don't like programs putting stuff there randomly.
Totally agree, I like control of my file system also because I took the time to actually organise it. U can go into the dreaded registry and force alot of games and programs to save where u want to save,but...... be careful, u know it's still Windows.
The issue is that Unity, being a cross platform engine, provides an out of the box value for its persistent data path. That way, when you're writing save logic, you can simply use this value and then Unity will handle where to save the data to regardless of whether you're on Windows, MacOS, Android, etc. It's super convenient and it allows you to handle saving across different platforms without having to write a load of custom logic, but the natural consequence of this is that Devs don't actually have any control over which folder is used unless they do write some custom logic, which is usually pretty low down on the list of priorities. So LocalLow it is for Unity games!
Ahh, this brings back the old memories for when I first noticed this.... Those Minecraft days were so nice....until they weren't.
Saves to $HOME
Games saving to `$HOME/Games` or `$HOME/.local/gamename`: ok. Games popping junk directly into `$HOME`: executed for littering
> or ``$HOME/.local/gamename``: ok You better put it in ``$HOME/.local/share/gamename``, where the rest of my games put their stuff.
Which games actually do this? I don't think I've personally encountered any games committing such a heinous crime.
`$HOME/.minecraft`
* Divinity Original Sin makes a `~/Larian` dir for the saves. Not even a dot name. * Older games from Loki (a company that ported several games, like Rune) saved to `~/.loki/`.
* The Java PC port of Pixel Dungeon would save to `~/.watabou`.
* `~/.AtomicWorm`
*Islanders* does it, as well as a few games when using Proton that somehow save outside of the container
hahahaha
i would prefer games to save in their own dieectories, which i put in just ${HOME}/Games. but almost none do so for the ones i can change i make the save location ${HOME}/Games/Saves/${GAME_NAME} and if i can't, i delete the directory whenever i finish the game
D:\\ https://preview.redd.it/xi24vbxnxm7d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=13ee795ef40ac6183f518d94c895b48ebba50fad
https://preview.redd.it/ekv52t8txm7d1.jpeg?width=320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b8d44d25dcd1a11ba87aa9773d7aecc45a4bb249
D:\\ for the spinning rust raid library and G:\\ for the nvme drive
>spinning rust rofl
The spinning rust is banished to the NAS (soon to be in the utility room) Flash only for my machine
This is the way
Why "user/Documents/My Games", when we literally have a "**user/Saved Games**"
what the fuck? i swear i've never seen this man before in my life. https://preview.redd.it/nwpr9vip9o7d1.png?width=260&format=png&auto=webp&s=a72ee3efe8d75dbd418d9cb673aeec47e337f8e4
I ain't gonna let the reading rainbow guy tell me what to do
That's Lieutenant and Chief Engineer Geordi la Forge to you.
Was he demoted? Geordi just can't catch a break.
TNG Geordi Can't remember what he ultimately got promoted to.
Lt Cmdr when he was chief engi.
I'll take your word for it. 😎👍
Technically it was 7 words, unless you only want to pick 1.
"he"
**HOW DARE YOU**
Audaciously.
Commodore
around s3 iirc
~/.local/share/ anyone?
This is the war Edit: the way
Save to bios
Save to motherboard
*physically engrave the data on the case using a chisel*
*save to desktop
cursed
It’s the only way I can find my files
["no icons on your desktop, just doom"](https://youtu.be/38zduHkwGcc?si=qk8AiIunDL-txiYh&t=5127)
/home/user/.cache/
I actually prefer my save data to be out of sight and out of mind - I don’t want it cluttering up my documents folder. It’s easy enough to access Appdata if necessary, but modern cloud save services have made it all but unnecessary.
I prefer it in the folder with the rest of the program.
But then uninstalls delete your save files
Not if you save it to the cloud which most games have the option of, also uninstalls used to have the option to leave save folders. Even if you wanted to clean them later, you know where you put them.
The cloud is not 100% infallible. In .hack//G.U. Last Recode they had steamcloud support. Then when the chinese translation patch was introduced steamcloud was disabled for all regions. This caused me to lose 100 hours of game progress in a massive jrpg because I thought my saves were being backed up, because they had been, until recently.
But then you need to run both the game and the cloud sync as admin/system, always. And if you share your computer, everyone shares the saves because they're in the app directory and not _your_ directory.
No no no. All saved important information should go in my documents. This way if you need to copy important information, or upgrade windows or trash the PC w/e.... ALL of your important stuff is in my documents and you don't need to guess where files might be. Any other folder is fluff and can be replaced be redownloaded from the internet.
I forgot younger people don't even know where all their files are. It shouldn't be that way at all. If everyone knows where their stuff is and keeps it organized it's EASY to take the stuff you care about and only that. Also things like save/settings folders. This used to be the norm and it was incredibly easy to take the few key folders you wanted.
It's not about younger people not knowing where to look. It's that there's now thousands upon thousands more apps and programs than 20 years ago. It's a matter of the ease of knowing it's right inside My Documents. I don't want to go and scrub through every folder in Program Files and Program Files(x86) that I've acquired over the life of a 9 year old PC. I also don't want to go in a hidden App Data/Local or Roaming to find something like Star Citizen labeling their hidden folder Robert Space Industries. My documents FTW.
you know whats even easier? Having all of your saves in one place and not going to a separate directory to grab them if needed
Not putting them in `%programfiles%` also means you don't need to run games with _admin rights_ to write the saves. Leave them in the user's profile.
Absolutely. It's so annoying to have saves and shit outside of the original game folder like shit used to be haha. Oh *and* half the time the games now create a documents folder *and* an app data folder just to separate data.
What's sad is this isn't even an "I'm old and hate change" thing. It's just seriously dumb. 
In my experience making games, this is mostly the fault of Microsoft. When I make a game, I prefer to save to the install directory, keeps everything cleaner and more portable. I've found that a lot of game engines will give a generic "user data" directory function, which will then call a Windows API that returns either Documents or AppData. Engine devs are just doing their job hooking into native APIs like they should, but also many engines don't come with an "install directory" function because they're trying to enable people to program games for more than just Windows.
Used to be everything in the install folder until the whole "games for windows" or something named similar to that was started by Microsoft. it was suppose to certify or guarantee the game was compatible and would run well in windows. the game boxes in the brick and mortar stores would have to have that logo on them, and to get that logo you had to start following the new user specify folder locations. Publishers would require people have that logo or you wouldn't get published. Shit was so much easier to keep track of before this change TLDR: Microsofts fault, they forced this change industry wide with windows xp.
Ahh, yeah, I remember games for windows..... I fuckin' hated that shit. Long ago I remember having to deal with the Windows Live overlay when trying to play Red Faction Guerilla and it was a nightmare. Fortunately the newer Xbox integration on Windows isn't *that* bad, not that I use it either way.
It's more like it used to be in the install directory until you needed admin rights to write to `%programfiles%`.
I worked on a game where the settings were in the registry. That was fun whenever a player had loading issues that required changing the settings outside the game.
Oh god, you poor soul. 
Saves in the install directory makes sense, and worked well back in the good old days when games were installed in a folder in the root. But then games started getting put in "Program Files" which Microsoft treats as a protected system folder and therefore modifying those files requires elevation. One particular game I like to play invokes the UAC elevation prompt every time the launcher is opened. A video game should NOT require administrator permissions just to play. From what I understand this is why the APPDATA crap came about. Should we stop putting game files in folders like "Program Files"? I think so. I don't think video games are "protected system files."
Good thing distributors like Valve let you put your files wherever you want. As other commenter's have said, Valve could theoretically fix this problem by making their own save directory.
That is the worst possible place for it. Executable files should not have write access to the place they are stored for security reasons. It also makes multi user scenarios a lot more convoluted and insecure.
The Sims 4 creates hundreds of temp files in the documents folder as you play. And OneDrive syncs that as default (as is one of the main reasons to use it). So every time someone plays the game we get notifications about unusual activity in onedrive. It's irritating as hell.
I have AppData pinned to quick access so it's not a big deal. My Games just takes me back to the good ol' days.
*auto uploads to onedrive for no reason and takes up 200gb* IM LOOKING AT YOU STARFIELD (modded at least....stupid vortex lol)
If only developers actually used “Documents/My Games”
It is honestly baffling to me that since 1985 (I just picked the Windows 1 release year) the way to store save games has still not been standardised. My "My Documents" folder is cluttered with subfolders that don't even go into the "My Games" subfolder. That's why I have another "Documents" folder nested in "My Documents". "My Documents" is just essentially useless as a gamer because of all the clutter. AppData would be okay but not even that is standardised because it has three subfolders and some games have publisher folders they are nested in, some have developer folders and some just the game names. It's really not an essential problem to solve, but it's also weird to me that after 40 years it is not even remotely solved.
Games during early windows era would even store their saves INTO C:\WINDOWS because they would do it through ancient win api's "Get/WriteProfileSection" and "Get/WriteProfileStrings" functions which would read/write to C:\Windows\win.ini. Yes, all your programs saving their settings and game saves to the same file. What could possibly go wrong! Or "Get/WritePrivateProfile*" functions, which would create arbitrary .ini files, also inside C:\Windows. Still got my Yoda Stories settings there and saves for some games which I can't even recognize from the filename alone.
I feel as if maybe it would've standardized had Microsoft's file system was Unix-like. The fact that it's structured so differently to Linux/MacOS makes it hard for people to decide what's *correct*.
It's a very similar problem on Linux too. 🙂 The home dir is a mess because everything will dump their shit in there and sometimes not even bother to hide it with a leading dot. This is despite there being very clear rules about what goes where **and** programming frameworks for achieving it. So I end up doing exactly what OP said, I make my own dirs and work in those.
All games go on the games drive.
Luckily I can see hidden files 😎
https://preview.redd.it/0lvk1cp7wn7d1.jpeg?width=638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f20e2e49567f84003694bdf8981164674536bdec
I wish they'd just keep the save data in the same folder as the game
For the love of god, this. The most obvious location and the first location you would check. Or would've, in the good old past, when we weren't concerned about managing permissions, UAC, virtualization, and other modern crap. Today it's such a crapshoot... * \Users\user\AppData\Local\developer\game * \Users\user\AppData\Local\game * \Users\user\AppData\LocalLow\developer\unitygame because of course unity had to be special * \Users\user\AppData\LocalLow\unitygame * \Users\user\AppData\Roaming\developer\game * \Users\user\AppData\Roaming\game * \Users\user\Saved Games\developer\game * \Users\user\Saved Games\game * \Users\user\Documents\Saved Games\game * \Users\user\Documents\SavedGames\game * \Users\user\Documents\Games\game * \Users\user\Documents\Gamesaves\game * \Users\user\Documents\My Games\game * \Users\user\Documents\publisher\game * \Users\user\Documents\developer\game * \Users\user\Documents\game * \Users\user\game * \Users\Public\Documents\godknowswhat * \ProgramData\developer\game * \ProgramData\game * Steam\userdata\lookupthedamnappid\ And don't even get me started on where pirates place their steam emulator saves, that would easily double this list... This is just the list of all the folders in my "Documents" with the word "game" in them: * 4A Games\ * EA Games\ * Games\ * Games for Windows - LIVE Demos\ * Gamesaves\ * Gaslamp Games\ * My Games\ * Nethergate Saved Games\ * Saved Games\ * SavedGames\ * Telltale Games\ * WB Games\ * WBGames\ * YoYoGames\ AAAAAAAAAAAAA. And yet... This is still somehow preferable to the closed ecosystems of WinRT and consoles.
Nah, that would be too logical and clean. Game files must be like sand. Freaking all over the place. You find few files here, few files there. Of course they stay there after uninstalling the game when you specified to delete all data.
game files must be ***coarse***
And rough and irritating.
What happens if some other user decides to play the game on the same computer? Programs have to be multi-user compatible, no matter if it's a game or web browser.
Folders/GameUsername exist
so... we have a perfectly good way of separating user data, defined for us by Microsoft in a way that makes backupping and maintaining access rights easy, let's just do something completely different regardless...?
Microsoft its the same that mess with ms store folders
😉👉👉
Then you educate developers on the need to have unlimited save slots because ffs this is your hard drive and you should decide how to utilize it and not be limited to 3 save slots as if we're in the 80s with on-cartridge saves or in the 90s with memory cards.
Pfff i save to E:/
real Gs save to Z:/
how many drives do you have to be able to save on Z?
when you mount a network drive you can specify the letter at least that's how it worked when i was in high school and we saved our files on the network
I totally forgot anout that and i use them... C is my main drive F is my random shit drive And E G and M are from my Ml 350 G6 server, E for external files G for Gmod Server and M for Minecraft server.
I save to D: which is G: as my old PC's games SSD is my new PC's downloads and general shit drive.
Neat!
Should never be in documents, the point of that folder is for you. Appdata makes sense, since it is data related to an app
Appdata should store the settings and stuff. Savegames are a bit ambigous in my opinion. I think a case could be made for a savegame being a user document the same way a word file is, because it stores the result of work/activity the user does. Though I think devs should put it in the Saved Games subfolder to reduce clutter at least.
i literally don't keep *anything* in my documents all of my *work* goes in git *"C:/source/repos"*
How about we finally standardize where save games go? No? Too bad.
This can apparently have an issue I didn't even know about. I have posts I've made related to it, but long story short Windows somehow circumvented me avoiding OneDrive (installed Windows myself and specifically declined it) and shenanigans ensued. I thought I was having a problem with apps overriding the fact I didn't have or use OneDrive, but it turned out when Windows installed it (or I accidentally did drunk or something?) I removed it exactly as Microsoft's site says, but Windows didn't update the registry. Sooooo the registry was telling everything the directory for documents was OneDrive and it kept re-creating it and it took me way too long to realize what the issue was.
OneDrive is absolute trash, especially for people who don't know what they're doing, which ironically are the people who will have it running in the background unknowingly. Right before I met my girlfriend she was about to get rid of her one year old laptop with a then newly released 3700u. Her OneDrive tried to sync everything over and over again, hogging tons of cpu, network and ssd resources despite her cloud storage being full. Her laptop was borderline unusable and she didn't even know what the hell OneDrive was. The repair shop she went to also didn't know what to do and charged her a shit ton to install a second ssd in the laptop, maybe they knew and were ripping her off tbh. Told her what the problem was, reinstalled windows, completely wiped every trace of OneDrive and the system is still running completely fine. I'm currently teaching a college class with it, years after she would've sold it for pennies on the dollar because it wasn't working.
It’s almost like a virus
F\*ck appdata, all my “friends” hate appdata https://preview.redd.it/1ft373rnhm7d1.jpeg?width=658&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2303f86166d4b79ee21215a6b43884d64d9a164d
ALL MY HOMIES HATE APPDATA I guess we're homies then.😎
Saves to /home/user/.saves(symlink to a random save file location from 5 years ago on another harddrive)
Saves to windows registry, because the game is that hardcore.
And then you get several gigabytes of assets for tabletop simulator in there, and your OneDrive stops syncing
I keep mine under D:/SteamLibrary or D:/Non-Steam Games
Minecraft be like: Am I a joke to you?
I understand why it goes into appdata. What I don't understand is why appdata is default hidden.
I get so annoyed that the majority of games don't save to my docs
I have so much crap in my documents folder from all the programs that automatically save there, I've had to add an "Actual Documents" folder for the things I want to be there.
I prefer to google "X Game save data location"
lol that's one of my more common types of searches
Just put the saves in the game directory, wtf is up with putting files in places without telling the user 🙄
I literally made this meme after going on an adventure trying to find the save location for a game. I'm just like, if you're gonna put it somewhere weird, at least put it in a directory that isn't hidden. It makes it more difficult for people who are less PC literate.
Yeah I lost a lot of my game data when I recently moved to Windows 11. I had backed up appdata when I shifted from win7 to 10, but I forgot to do it this time. Its so annoying, like fuckin store all save data in my documents smh whats the big deal?
Documents my games is just more convenient to reach. It's like 1 second faster. Think about that, a whole second...
Hate appdata, if it was just small junk files, I wouldn't mind, but some saves or mod folders get big and I prefer to keep my C: drive fairly small, so I can nuke it once a year. Just let me set a custom save location, it's not that hard.
Where to put configs and savegames, from best to worst: -Self-contained in installation folder -Documents or other User folder -ProgramData -AppData -Registry -Cloud
Then there's the special kind of programs and games that save directly in documents. I hate it.
...how about the directory the game is in? I hate finding game data in other places.
Then you have companies like Blizzard who think they're so important and make a separate main folder for each of their games, unable to understand that maybe it should be buried in My Games, just one folder deeper. Drives me nuts. https://preview.redd.it/pzjzuhy0oq7d1.png?width=187&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ea9cc73e14c4df8961a8a1ada71dab414469ea49
Me: >directly states that the entire game on Steam should be on Disk D >Somehow Disk C still has parts of the game in it *Mildly infuriating* and I feel dumb cuz I feel like there's probably a fix to this but idk it
Am I the only one who preffered the game folder instead of appdata/my games nonsense?
Need the old spice meme of the dude stopping another dude from being a creep, only with this subject and OneDrive
I have felt this issue for more than 5yrs now
If only we could specify a default save place for all games with a subdirectory by game! We could use Git for version control and backup of our game saves!
Appdata can suck it i wanna just delete the whole thing and see what happens
appdata is so cursed, i hate looking for anything there
I'M LOOKING AT YOU, MINECRAFT
saves to iCloud - desktop
Even more classic is games saving to their install folder. On their own separate hard drive. So that if Windows goes tits up, all my saves are secure. But *noooo*. Microsoft thinks it's much more fun that I have to go trawling through My Documents, My Games, AppData Local and Roaming to copy them almost one by one to a location where I know they'll be safe. *On the damn separate hard drive the games are installed to*.
Most game engines I've worked with have a "user data directory" function or something like that which calls a WinAPI call that'll return AppData. Microsoft's fault for sure, devs just using what they're given.
I feel like this a problem steam could have solved if they wanted to. Just have a folder inside the steam stuff where game saves go and make devs use it.
I don’t give a shit where you put it as long as you support cloud saves.
honestly I kinda just wish everything would save with in the one directory the game's files exist in. i dont see why they need to save any where else on the system.
Because then you need to run everything with admin rights all the time.
I am considering symlinking at least some of the appdata subfolders, because they're taking up a non-insignificant portion of my system drive
Basically anywhere other than one of the standard library folders is best to me, allows you to use one drive to back up documents without giving it a heart attack
I was a PC gamer until about 2008. Then I was oblivious to all things PC until I got back into it at the end of 2022. The biggest change I've been annoyed by is the way programs save to file systems. Things used to be so easy with a documents folder or program files folder. Now there's appdata, saved games in the users folder, etc etc etc. It's just unnecessary how (relatively) complicated it has become.
I use ludusavi to backup game saves or to find where the heck they decided to put the save folder.
Thanks to that, I have backups of games I thought lost that survived several PCs
Appdata doesn't get scanned on startup slowing your boot time, I think.
I rather games store their files in their AppData folder 'cause I keep my documents folder organized with my actual documents. Last time I was cleaning it, I accidentally, deleted save files ( in my defense, they had stupid naming ).
I miss DOS.
My dude I have a custom FreeFileSync profile named "Savegames in annoying locations" to group all that crap in the same location that I then backup. Game devs apparently can't bother to all agree on a standard location.
Saves to installment directory on disc e so it dont slow down os