GameSaveBackup

While Steam, Origin and other digital distribution platforms usually store your saves in the cloud, support for this feature is not available for all games. And, of course, if the game is DRM-free, everything is usually saved locally.

GameSaveBackup is an open-source application that enables you to backup the contents of a folder to another location, including cloud storage, and restore them when necessary.

The program is designed to watch one or more folders, normally where saves are stored, and copy files to a different location. It can be used to create local backups, but you can also send files to something like a Dropbox or Google Drive folder to also store them in the cloud.

GameSaveBackup can monitor the source folders automatically and copy any new files to the destination path. Files are compared based on their modification date, and you will be prompted if a more recent file is to be overwritten.

In order to add your games, you will need to open the configuration file in a text editor and enter their paths manually. You can also specify if backups should be run automatically or manually and whether an entry should be ignored, and you can also exclude certain types of files.

Naturally, less experienced users may find this process to be rather confusing, which is why a more intuitive method is necessary. Once you’ve finished setting things up, however, it is very easy to manage your games from the system tray menu.

GameSaveBackup can definitely prove useful for gamers who need an alternative method of backing up their saves, and it has the advantage of being very unobtrusive. However, the fact that it can only be set up by editing a configuration file is a big downside.