Save Games Vanished - Nothing in files

[HojoTheGreat]

I've seen two other cases of this on the forums, and it seems to be rampant on Xbox 360s. I was playing earlier today, was about 6 hours into the game and had unlocked a number of achievements, and then coming back to it tonight all of my progress is gone, the entire Save profile has just disappeared into nothingness. I have checked in the appropriate folders and can confirm they are in fact gone, completely erased. With no provocation.

If anyone has any idea what's going on specifically it'd be a huge help. Sadly I don't expect to get anything back. Thanks Rocksteady, great release > <*

EVERYONE MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR SAVES, LOCATED HERE:
EDIT: Currently I cannot locate a directory with save files period. Apparently it's saved to a Cloud system. Searching for potential leads.

[trek554]

there are no save files in that folder for me anyway.

[yogibbear]

I've seen two other cases of this on the forums, and it seems to be rampant on Xbox 360s. I was playing earlier today, was about 6 hours into the game and had unlocked a number of achievements, and then coming back to it tonight all of my progress is gone, the entire Save profile has just disappeared into nothingness. I have checked in the appropriate folders and can confirm they are in fact gone, completely erased. With no provocation.

If anyone has any idea what's going on specifically it'd be a huge help. Sadly I don't expect to get anything back. Thanks Rocksteady, great release > <*

EVERYONE MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR SAVES, LOCATED HERE:
C:\Users\COMPUTERNAME\Documents\WB Games\Batman Arkham City\SaveData

Negative. Confirm you were logged into GfWL and that you are now logged into GfWL. If this is like any other GfWL piece of crap out there the saves are hidden somewhere in GfWL patheticness.

[Alienware Gamer]

I've seen two other cases of this on the forums, and it seems to be rampant on Xbox 360s. I was playing earlier today, was about 6 hours into the game and had unlocked a number of achievements, and then coming back to it tonight all of my progress is gone, the entire Save profile has just disappeared into nothingness. I have checked in the appropriate folders and can confirm they are in fact gone, completely erased. With no provocation.

If anyone has any idea what's going on specifically it'd be a huge help. Sadly I don't expect to get anything back. Thanks Rocksteady, great release > <*

EVERYONE MAKE BACKUPS OF YOUR SAVES, LOCATED HERE:
C:\Users\COMPUTERNAME\Documents\WB Games\Batman Arkham City\SaveData You need to use an online GFWL profile & its not rampant either on 360s. On 360 if some players do not exit the game cleanly & just remove the DVD from the drive the game does not have the time to save the data so they lose it as no 360 can save a game if the player suddenly decides to eject the game dvd without saving & or as using a non legal copy!!

On PC the save data can be stored in other areas it depends on the game if your using the Steam version with Steamcloud your saves will be in the Cloud (which in my experience is unrelaible anyway).

[XOMTOR]

Are you using an offline account? If you're signing into Live in online mode (clicking the sign-in button), you're playing Russian roulette with your saves. With Asylum and this game, I've used "offline" mode and have never encountered an error or issue with my saves. All I do is hit the X button to close the G4WL dialog box as soon as it appears and my offline profile (simply named Batman) loads automatically. No need to sign into anything.

Sure you won't get the Live achievements or gamerscore points but personally I don't care, I don't own an Xbox.

[Doctor_Hades]

Games for Windows Live + PC game = Very high chance of corrupted saves

Personally, I think GfWL should disappear for good as it is hugely unpopular with PC gamers, gets negative reviews from PC magazines if games use it (PC Gamer I think) and many publishers hate it too because of the lengthy Microsoft certification process each patch must go through. Not only that but if you build a new PC then transferring the saves can be a pain as files are stored in a hidden XLive folder under AppData. All in all it's a terrible piece of software that should do the decent thing and die a quiet death.

I lost over 10 hours of my career in Virtua Tennis 4 for example and haven't returned to the game since.

[Alienware Gamer]

Games for Windows Live + PC game = Very high chance of corrupted saves

Personally, I think GfWL should disappear for good as it is hugely unpopular with PC gamers, gets negative reviews from PC magazines if games use it (PC Gamer I think) and many publishers hate it too because of the lengthy Microsoft certification process each patch must go through. Not only that but if you build a new PC then transferring the saves can be a pain as files are stored in a hidden XLive folder under AppData. All in all it's a terrible piece of software that should do the decent thing and die a quiet death.

I lost over 10 hours of my career in Virtua Tennis 4 for example and haven't returned to the game since. VT4 is broken still because Sega coded using the wrong version of GFWL thats why saves go missing there down to their cheap outsourced to wherever lowest bid coders & zero QA!! GFWL is fine but some developers suck at implementing it or CBA to do any QA which is what has obviously happened here. Nvidia were using a different set of drivers in their QA testing which is why DX11 is messed up right now as they have not released them to public yet either today or tomorrow hopefully!

GFWL is going away anyway as Windows8 will have native support for it so develoeprs will have to use it then at an OS level.

[Ricky Nihil]

I had a corrupt save in Arkham Asylum, but it happened at a place where corrupt saves were reported on the 360 version too, so perhaps it wasn't a GFWL issue. Nice of Rocksteady to not bother to patch it, this was GOTY version too. Just try to remember to back up your saves, though it is obviously something we should have to worry about. :/

[HojoTheGreat]

Hey all thanks for the responses! Sorry for the confusion regarding the save location, I'll edit that right away.

No one doubts the horribleness of GFWL, it's been a constant battle for PC gamers with the system since its introduction like 6 years ago. I'll never understand for the life of me how a networking system, DESIGNED ON A COMPUTER, could work more effectively on a console than PC. Why not just transfer the same party, chat, library, etc. system over? Microsoft gave up on PC gaming the moment they released the 360. Time for them to step down and stop wasting money.

So with all of this said, does anyone have an idea how I can locate the Cloud files, either through GFWL or Steam? Or if it's even possible to contact Steam to inquire about the issue?

Cheers, Happy Turkey Day to the Americans in the house!

[Caspian]

Anyone tried contacting Steam yet?

[LaptopNut]

Hey all thanks for the responses! Sorry for the confusion regarding the save location, I'll edit that right away.

<--snip-->
So with all of this said, does anyone have an idea how I can locate the Cloud files, either through GFWL or Steam? Or if it's even possible to contact Steam to inquire about the issue?

Cheers, Happy Turkey Day to the Americans in the house!

When I lost my save, I started a new one but when I exited and went to play later on, my lost save had overwritten my new one and everything was back. I assume the Steam Cloud decided to do this and now I have saves in that location you mentioned. I wish GFWL would vanish like the saves did....

[Lodsiek]

I sent a ticket to the Steam guys a couple of days ago; no response. In their defense, after the Autumn Sale they may be getting a crapton of tickets, but my save is still AWOL.

[Stellar Bull]

I sent a ticket to the Steam guys a couple of days ago; no response. In their defense, after the Autumn Sale they may be getting a crapton of tickets, but my save is still AWOL.

Keep us posted on the results, please. I lost my save too and if Steam Support can help with that, I would love to know.

[LaptopNut]

Keep us posted on the results, please. I lost my save too and if Steam Support can help with that, I would love to know.

I got my lost save back by exiting steam and restarting. Looks like Steam Cloud must have done a resync after doing that.

[N.O.U.G.N.]

I lost my save file after the game locked up then I killed the process.
I accidentally skipped a cut scene, then went to restart from late check point but couldn't. this sucks I want to be able to have at least 2 save points in case I mess up in the game.
I have read that Gear of War PC gamers have had the same issue.
So is this a GFWL or Unreal engine issue?

Is there a way to unlock the levels of the game or is that impossible because of the game is one big level?

[CommodoreBluth]

The Gears of War save issue is NOT related to GFWL it's a bug in the game that was never fixed, anyway I'm very tired so the following might not be of any help to those in this thread but this is what you need to do to backup GFWL saves:

Basically when you run a GFWL game for the first time it creates something in the Xlive folder which is needed for that games save(s) to work if you ever reinstall windows or install the game on another PC so you should backup the entire folder and your game save each time after playing a new GFWL game for the first time. You have to do it each time because as far as I know there's no way to find out which files are for which game as they're only numbered although unless you have DLC installed the folder size is pretty small. If you do have DLC installed and don't want to back it up then just backup everything inside the Xlive folder except the DLC folder.

To find the Xlive folder you need to set windows to show hidden files, folders and drives then find it here: Users/<Username>/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Xlive

I have tried the above method on over 20 GFWL games and have never once had an issue with my saves, even when putting the save on a new install of windows or a different computer. Also I believe all GFWL games allow you to save with an offline account, it's just that if you cancel making both an online and offline account that you can't save your games.

Interesting. Do you know which of those five folders (besides DLC) the saves are typically kept in?

Also do you know if the save files appear normally in this folder (for example for this game as the .sgd file) or are they encrypted or protected in some way so Microsoft is sure people can't use other saves to get achievements?

[trek554]

The Gears of War save issue is NOT related to GFWL it's a bug in the game that was never fixed, anyway I'm very tired so the following might not be of any help to those in this thread but this is what you need to do to backup GFWL saves:

Basically when you run a GFWL game for the first time it creates something in the Xlive folder which is needed for that games save(s) to work if you ever reinstall windows or install the game on another PC so you should backup the entire folder and your game save each time after playing a new GFWL game for the first time. You have to do it each time because as far as I know there's no way to find out which files are for which game as they're only numbered although unless you have DLC installed the folder size is pretty small. If you do have DLC installed and don't want to back it up then just backup everything inside the Xlive folder except the DLC folder.

To find the Xlive folder you need to set windows to show hidden files, folders and drives then find it here: Users/<Username>/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Xlive

I have tried the above method on over 20 GFWL games and have never once had an issue with my saves, even when putting the save on a new install of windows or a different computer. Also I believe all GFWL games allow you to save with an offline account, it's just that if you cancel making both an online and offline account that you can't save your games.the save issue in Gears had to be somewhat related to GFWL. I had nightmares with that game when it was still fairly new. tons of crashes and I would also randomly lose tons of progress having to repeat huge sections of the game multiple times. a year later and there was not one single problem playing the game. considering the game itself never had a patch after the first time I played and only GFWL was updated then its clear GFWL was the issue.