savegame files

[lost bone]

Something led me to look at the format of the .spz2 savegame files. I was surprised at how easy they are to inspect and manipulate.
And then game the system with them.
I created a new temp game, insane challenge, saved, manipulated the savegame file, and imported a new game. In the new game, I now have:

• 1 billion blueprint credits
• 1 billion research credits
• 1 billion saved shapes for all milestone shapes
• operator level 100000
• all operator level shapes at level 70
• 0 used platforms or machines
• 0 delivered shapes

I haven't tried, but I'm assuming I could use this to artificially get steam achievements or mode operator licenses or who knows what else. Kind of made me lose interest in the whole leaderboard thing.
I don't know where the best place to mention this is, or if I should even mention it at all.

[tranquil dune]

yeah well there isn't really a way to prevent this, even if you try to encrypt the save format as much as possible, it will still be able to be decrypted.
keep in mind that the game also has cheats ( https://shapez2.wiki.gg/wiki/Debug_Console ) that allow you to modify the values you mentioned, tho when cheats are enabled you can't earn achievements, but it's relatively easy to disable cheats too, one method being editing the save.
as for the leaderboard, the ranking isn't live but instead a static formula based on previous statistics, because in fact it would be too easy to cheat if the leaderboard was live

[low magnet]

If nothing else, the save needs to be decryptable or else the game couldn't load it. You could add checksums and tamper detection, but even those can be defeated.