Broken Saves, Not Synched to Cloud [Resolved]

[Echo Candor One]

I am having a weird situation.

Most of my saves are marked "broken save," in red text, and none of them ever synch to the Steam cloud.

What would I try to debug this, other than verifying the game files (which were fine.)?

Thanks!

 

[AndrewT]

Very hard to say, really. FYI it is not a known problem with this game.

Any mods used in this game?

Does the same happen if you do local saves instead of cloud?

 

[Echo Candor One]

Thank you so much for responding!

I can't actually make a cloud save; they're always local, and the problem persists in both modded and unmodded games. I have the game set to save to the cloud, but it never does.

 

[AndrewT]

Sorry, I'm a little confused now. You can't make cloud saves at all yet you say they show as broken saves?

In any case let's try a clean reinstall of Steam and game:

- move any valued save games elsewhere, and user_empire_designs.txt from /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ if you have made any custom empires or races.
- "uninstall" in Steam-Stellaris
- exit the Steam app entirely
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Stellaris AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folders
In particular you need to make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Stellaris or Documents Stellaris locations, before installing again.

- delete everything in the Steam folder EXCEPT steam.exe and the SteamApps folder
- run steam.exe to rebuild all that

- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add stellaris.exe AND steam.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

Good luck!

 

[Echo Candor One]

Sorry, I'm a little confused now. You can't make cloud saves at all yet you say they show as broken saves?

In any case let's try a clean reinstall of Steam and game:

- move any valued save games elsewhere, and user_empire_designs.txt from /Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris/ if you have made any custom empires or races.
- "uninstall" in Steam-Stellaris
- exit the Steam app entirely
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Stellaris AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Stellaris folders
In particular you need to make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Stellaris or Documents Stellaris locations, before installing again.

- delete everything in the Steam folder EXCEPT steam.exe and the SteamApps folder
- run steam.exe to rebuild all that

- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add stellaris.exe AND steam.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

Good luck!

RE: The confusing part: you'reconfused because I'm confused. Let me show you what I am looking at:

I am not certain how to interpret what I am seeing so I said "I can't actually make a cloud save; they're always local." Apologies for being vague. An unsynched "cloud" save is just a local file, right?


I will report back after I try what you've written

 

[Echo Candor One]

I'm back!

No dice. I started a new game and the local save is fine, but the cloud save is broken and not synched, just like before.

 

[AndrewT]

Has the game always been like this for you? Or it was okay up to some point?

In your Steam settings, is Steam Cloud Sync enabled?

 

[Echo Candor One]

I took a break from Stellaris right around the launch of 3.0 and came back a week or so ago. It worked fine before, but something definitely changed. If no one else is complaining about this, it's almost certainly my setup. Alas, I checked and steam cloyd synch is enabled.

 

[AndrewT]

Then I don't understand why what we did didn't fix it

Crusader Kings 2 is free to play on Steam now, and uses the same save system. Can you see if that game will save to cloud okay please?

Oh, and check your Steam Cloud here:

Sign In

store.steampowered.com

Does that work? Is it perhaps full?

 

[Echo Candor One]

How can I tell if it's full?

Also, my last stellaris save on the cloud is actually back in April 2020, which means my saves were fine before 3.0 but not after -- but I'm not convinced Stellaris is the problem after the steps we took. Let me try Crusader Kings and I'll tell you how it goes. I appreciate your help.

 

[Echo Candor One]

Well, maybe it is specifically stellaris after all. Crusader Kings saved and loaded from the cloud just fine. :|

 

[AndrewT]

Steam writes cloud saves to a local folder .../Steam/userdata/YourSteamID#/281990/Remote/save games/ . Are the cloud save files physically there?

If so, right click on this game in your Steam Library, General. Is "keep game saves in the Steam cloud" ticked?

 

[Echo Candor One]

I think the answer is yes to both questions. The folders all have files in them in the convention of date.sav or ironman.sav.

 

[Echo Candor One]

Wait, I see 800 kb available. Maybe you were right about a lack of space? I'm gonna try to empty my steam cloud and will report back.

 

[Echo Candor One]

I have discovered that I have 900+ mb of stellaris saves, but there appears to be no way to delete them.

 

[AndrewT]

Can you not delete them in the game Load interface?

 

[Echo Candor One]

I feel silly now. I was trying to delete them from my file browser. There are all these guides about using powershell to corrupt the save files and trigger a resynch. I got lost trying to do that.

Deleting the saves in the game worked. Thank you. This is 100% resolved. The saves are synching again.