NO!!!!!

[fragger]

So today I decided to continue my current playthrough of Fallout 4, in which I had invested the last four months of my gaming time. I'd worked my way up to Level 84, put in a buttload of w0#k building some of the coolest settlements I've ever come up with, amassed an arsenal of awesome Legendary weapons, and had an excellent character build underway.

Then Steam did an update.

Yep. All my FO4 saves have disappeared from the save folder on my PC (Documents/My Games/Fallout 4/Saves). Gone without a trace. And since I don't like being online with Steam when I'm playing, there are no backups in the cloud or anything.

I had no choice - I had to start a new game right from the very beginning. And thanks to Steam's intrusiveness, from now on I'm going to have to save a backup of my current game to another folder every time I quit, in case this happens again.

Thanks a lot Steam, you made my day

[PZ]

 

So sorry to hear about your problem, fragger!  We've all been there one time or another so we know how you feel! I'm a bit perplexed as to how your game saves disappeared 

I hope your next settlement turns out even better 

[fragger]

I'm a bit perplexed as to how your game saves disappeared

All I know is I was playing the game the night before and all was well. The next day about mid-morning I clicked on my FO4 icon and Steam immediately began a 150Mb update. As soon as the update was over, FO4's launch window appeared and I hit "Play". When the game loaded, both the "Continue" and "Load" options in the main menu were greyed out. An Explorer check in the folder where Steam automatically stores the saved game files confirmed the worst - it was totally empty.

So I can only conclude that Steam's update cleaned it out for some reason. Seems too much of a coincidence that the folder was empty right after the update, when I had done nothing in between - and I'd done nothing on my PC between quitting the game right before bed the night before and launching it the next morning.

[Dweller_Benthos]

That is very odd, a regular Steam update should do nothing to game saves even if you uninstall Steam entirely, your saves folder is usually never changed. Sorry to hear that happened, sure is discouraging, I know I would be a bit perturbed. I suppose you've checked the recycle bin, even though that's usually useless? A utility like disk drill to recover deleted files might come up with something but it's a long shot. A very odd occurrence for sure.

[PZ]

That makes me a bit nervous, being a Steam customer. The companies do way too many updates IMO. I've not had anything bad happen, but plenty of others have reported some kind of trouble.

[BinnZ]

Wow Fragger, that's one of the shittiest things that can happen to us gamers. I feel your pain. I was thinking in the same direction as D_B regarding possible solutions to recover your files, maybe system restore?
But I also know that you must've probably already tried stuff like that.

Stick with PZ's advice, and build even greater the next time. One thing is for sure; although you lost your files, you didn't loose the experience

[fragger]

I've never had it happen before. I guess there's a first time for everything...

I don't have any other explanation. The saved-games folder is created by Steam itself when you install FO4 (the folder it creates is Documents/My Games/Fallout4/Saves) and I know I didn't do anything in there myself. As I said, it happened immediately after the update completed, so it's a bit fishy. Oh well.

What I'm doing now is whenever I want to quit the game, I do a "hard" save, then once I'm out I copy the save file to a temp folder - just in case it happens again.

@D_B, yep, I looked in the Recycle Bin, nothing there. I can't really be bothered downloading any utilities or doing a restore to revive something which may or may not be dead and gone, so I'll just chalk it up to experience and wear it

One thing is for sure; although you lost your files, you didn't loose the experience

Agreed, there is that

[Dweller_Benthos]

I think the game creates it's save folder where it wants it, not steam, and then steam just accesses it when you have cloud saves turned on, steam should not otherwise access that folder. From what I gather, it was an update to the steam client, not an update to the game itself? I just can't figure out why an update to the steam client would have anything to do with game saves. So I'm figuring something else that coincidentally happened at the same time as the steam update hosed your saves. Unless there's something really strange about how things are setup on your hard drive they should have nothing to do with each other. Now, if it was an update to Fallout 4, I can MAYBE think that might cause an issue with save games, but really should also not touch those folders unless something in the game bugged out, and deleted the saves. I mean it is Bethesda software so I wouldn't put it beyond it but it is very strange. I've had a couple Cyberpunk saves go away because I did something stupid, not any fault of the software, that's all on me.

Just thinking, maybe, just maybe if steam updated and turned on cloud saves for some reason, saw nothing saved in the cloud, decided that should also be reflected on your end, and deleted the saves, but that would be really bizarre. I've had times when cloud saves were on and I intentionally wanted to delete some saves to regain space, and steam would just copy them back over again from the cloud, so the opposite problem you've had. You actually have to tell steam to turn off cloud saves, then shut it down, delete what you want to delete then start it up and turn cloud saves back on. Again, some weird things happen so who knows.

In the end, doesn't really matter as your saves are gone and that plain sucks.

[PZ]

Just thinking, maybe, just maybe if steam updated and turned on cloud saves for some reason, saw nothing saved in the cloud, decided that should also be reflected on your end, and deleted the saves, but that would be really bizarre.

I think that explanation might make the most sense. I recall using iTunes years ago and developed a problem because the platform at that time was really poorly designed. To this day I remember synching up another device which resulted in the deletion of all my tunes,    The take-home lesson for me was that synching can (rarely) result in data loss.

I've never used anything Apple for any of my media since.

[Dweller_Benthos]

For sure, and don't even get me started on the train wreck that is Microsoft's OneDrive, that thing is complete trash.

[PZ]

I hardly use OneDrive because of MS greed. We started out with 15gb space, which they reduced to 5gb after everyone became accustomed to the increased space over Google. I also have a problem with the version of Outlook that they are are using to replace Windows Mail. They have introduced advertisements in your inbox with the trash icon to the left rather than the right so they are click-baiting people into clicking those links. i do not like how they have changed Office into a subscription plan rather than pay for it once. Nothing but greed. 

[fragger]

You raise some interesting points, D_B. Thanks for your input It's a head-scratcher alright.

I do not like how they have changed Office into a subscription plan rather than pay for it once. Nothing but greed. 

Yes indeed, PZ. Same with graphics programs like Photoshop. I'm still using Photoshop 7 because Adobe only does subscriptions for their graphics titles now ($30 AUD per month for basic Photoshop, without all the bells and whistles of the "Pro" title). P7 was a one-time purchase back in the day (and it wasn't cheap then either), but it does everything I need so I've stuck with it. So has a mate of mine who works with graphics.

As for MS Office I only ever used Word, so now if I want to make a document I just use Windows Wordpad. It works just as well as Word for my simple needs.

[Dweller_Benthos]

The problem with OneDrive is that it changes the locations on your hard drive of basic things, like the desktop. One of the guys at w0#k came to me and said something wasn't working on his PC, and that it updated recently. I knew not to bother asking what options he selected during the update because he wouldn't know what they were or even remember, so the defaults I'm sure. The defaults, are, of course, to use OneDrive for everything. So all the shared folders that are accessed by other people on the network no longer w0#k because those are now under OneDrive and not User. Same goes for the backups tied to those folders. Kicker is, there's no way to get rid of OneDrive either, you can turn it off, even uninstall it, which we did, but that doesn't put things back where they were, they are now forever under OneDrive even though it's been removed. Had to spend hours getting the links to backups and shared folders working again.

On my home system, when I first ran windows, I had no idea what OneDrive was, so I said, sure, turn it on and let it back up my stuff for free. Well, of course, my free space ran out and instead of just saving files to my local drive, it doesn't save them at all, because OneDrive is full. Lost a couple save games because of that. Luckily nothing super important, but still, it's incredibly dumb. Of course, they want you to fill your free space so you'll buy the larger space and send them more money every month.

Subscription services are never going away now, they have tasted that monthly money coming in and see how much more they can make that way instead of just selling a single one time use license, so it will be that way from now on.

[PZ]

...As for MS Office I only ever used Word, so now if I want to make a document I just use Windows Wordpad. It works just as well as Word for my simple needs.

I'm using the free open-source LibreOffice for my replacement for MS Office. Works just as well, and can use the same file format as MS Office.

Subscription services are never going away now, they have tasted that monthly money coming in and see how much more they can make that way instead of just selling a single one time use license, so it will be that way from now on.

Totally agree. I noticed also that during some updates the default is to sync your documents to OneDrive unless you look carefully. Just now looking at my OneDrive, I noticed that I have a few game saves up that I never set to be there.  One needs to be watchful to ensure that files are not synched.  The only exception for me is OneNote notebooks. OneNote is arguably the best thing MS has ever put out, but as I write I realize that they did this to get people accustomed to using it so they can weasel us into storing ALL of your documents under the guise of "Now you have access to all your documents on all devices".

I like OneNote so much for lists (grocery, shopping, RV trip checklists, etc.) that I'll definitely keep using OndDrive for that purpose, but only for that. I periodically go in and clean out stuff.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah a few good applications for it and then it weasels it's way into everything.