The “Break it Down” Blog

This is pretty badass news for the gamers out there that can’t stand fending for themselves with regards to game data… it looks like Valve will be going the “we’ll save all your stuff for free” route by enhancing Steam with a generic ability to store game-data files like save games, configuration files, etc.

The game has to be enhanced to take advantage of this storage mechanism, but it occurs in the background when you have an active internet connection and there is no cap for you on the size or amount of information saved.

You just tick off “Save my shit online” (label wording may vary) and Steam will start uploading your personal game resources directly to their servers, associated with your account.

Let’s say you get a virus and get wiped out and build a new machine, reinstall Steam and redownload your games… no worries, here come your save games and game configuration settings back down the games themselves onto your new machine.

Yes a natural progression for Steam, but a very cool move non-the-less. For those that remember the huge “Steam got hacked” leak from a few years ago where the financial information from Valve pertaining to Steam subscribers/users leaked and there was some number like 6 million users of the service… that’s not a trivial amount of savegame or configuration data that will magically be persisted to the system… so bravo for them for covering that.

It looks like Valve’s own family of games (Left 4 Dead, TF2, etc.) are going to be the first to get the enhancement rolled into an update, with more games to follow as vendors decide to take advantage of it.

My guess/hope is that it’s nothing more than specifying where your gamedata lives (from a vendors perspective) and Steam will just go vacuum it up for you… no need to write custom plugins or code or fancy stuff.

Thanks MaximumPC!