#Help manually recovering save file after Cloud sync failure has caused me to lose 372h of progress.

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

neat rivet
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Hello there! I'm a big Balatro fan, having amassed 372 hours of progress on it since it got added to Gamepass!

#1 - Back about a month ago, I had an issue with the cloud save sync which caused me to lose all my progress as upon booting the game on my PC, I was met with the "conflict" warning screen and prompted to select either the local save or the one uploaded onto the cloud. I selected the local save as I had just been playing there literally 30 mins prior to this, however to my surprise the game booted into a brand new save file, with all my progress having been erased. I turned the game off and as soon as I got home, I tried playing it on my Xbox Series X and it immediately synced the save to match the version in the cloud, which was now at 0% progress, without even giving me a prompt to select between versions as no conflict was detected. At that moment, I contacted Xbox support. Upon doing so, I was asked if I happened to have another Xbox, by any chance... and I do, I keep a Series S in the kitchen as a secondary unit! The support agent suggested I play the game on offline mode in that console (I own Balatro as I ended up purchasing it a few weeks after it got added to Gamepass since I find the game excellent), which I proceeded to do! Upon playing a couple of minutes and then putting the Series S onto online mode again, I opened Balatro and was greeted by the save conflict screen... and upon selecting the local save, I managed to recover my old save and get that one copied onto the cloud! I did lose a couple of hours of progress, but compared to losing upwards of 200 hours (at that point), that was nothing! I was hugely relieved and continued to enjoy the game immensely.

Continued below since I hit character limit:

hardy glacierBOT
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neat rivet
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#2 - A few days ago. The same issue happened again... the cloud sync failed upon booting the game and I lost all my progress again. Not to worry, I thought to myself... I can just use the same workaround as last time and get back my progress! However, this time when I try and launch the game in offline mode, it won't allow me to and I'm greeted by a warning screen telling me I need to play the game in online mode, despite the fact that I do own it so I know that isn't true. Contact Xbox support again and they tell me the only way to fix that "need to be online to play" issue is to remove my profile from the console and then add it again. However, when I attempt to remove my profile, I get a warning screen telling me that any save data that isn't uploaded will be lost. Meaning the very thing I'm trying to recover would be lost in the process of attempting to fix the issue. After informing Xbox support of this, I was instructed to not remove my profile and contact the game developer about the issue instead, in hopes they'd be able to provide me with a backup of my save. I did so, but was told by the dev that unfortunately the data on their side is the same one as is currently in the Xbox Cloud, that is to say a 0% progress save. I was told by them the only solution would be to manually access the save file on the Series S itself to back it up and then transplanting that save to my PC, which should prompt the same "conflict" choice screen as mentioned before. However, Xbox support is refusing to assist me in doing this so I turn to you folks in hopes of obtaining a solution for this issue. I can prove everything I just stated if needed as I kept backups of all my interactions.

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Will dev mode allow me to access the file manually?

sage arrow
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Dev mode will not let you get your save back. Dev mode allows for your console to have tools to make and publish games to xbox. When you go into Dev mode you lose access to the retail experience and can not acesss or play your games.

The save coming out of sync is because you played on 2 different devices and the device as older save data. When you get that sync message you should choose the correct save and it sounds like you did not so that save is lost.

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If you also played offline you need to go online on the device you played offline for the save to sync first.

neat rivet
# sage arrow the sync issue can also happen more so and will be worse if you play offline if...

Thank you for the input, however the other device doesn't have "older save data", nor did I not select the correct save... if the issue was me having chosen the incorrect save then all that would've happened was that I would've lost a few hours of progress, not have the save be reset to 0% completion.

The problem is that the save now in the cloud is that same save that is at 0% and if I open the game on the console in online mode it will automatically sync to that version and I'll lose my progress permanently. So I would need to play the game in offline mode to even be able to generate a conflict in save data so that I would have a choice of which save to proceed with in order to restore the correct save to the cloud... but I can't do that since the game won't launch in offline mode due to some error (I both own the game and have it on my home xbox so there shouldn't be any reason for me to not be able to play the game).

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Dev mode is indeed separate from the retail experience, but isn't there any option in dev mode to use software that would allow me to explore the internal file system of the Series S (if such a software were to even exist, that is).

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The issue boils down to this... I need to be able to access my save data that is stored on my Series S manually, there is no other way to solve this issue. I understand that we can no longer do this by default like we could in the 360 days, but is there really no workaround for this?

lusty sand
neat rivet
# lusty sand thats breaks tos. only if u r making a game can u access dev mode. i think mic...

That's a shame about dev mode.

I understand that me personally accessing the files on my Xbox is against the TOS, bit it seems so silly to me that I can't just send my Xbox to Microsoft support/repair and have them do something as basic as extract a file for me, especially since the problem arose entirely due to a malfunction in the cloud sync system that I wasn't responsible for in any way.

I'm now afraid to play games using Xbox Play Anywhere alternating between PC and Xbox due to their uncompromising stance on this matter, essentially.

lusty sand
neat rivet
# lusty sand i had no issues playing ace attorney via play anywhere on both pc or xbox

I've played a ton of games using the service (bought an ROG Ally purposefully to take advantage of there being so many great titles with Play Anywhere capabilities) and Balatro's the first time I've encountered any issues, but Microsoft's unwillingness to assist is what's making me reticent. Was really looking forward to playing Metaphor Refantazio when it comes to Game Pass tomorrow, too. Guess I'll risk it but not feeling very secure about it...

lusty sand
neat rivet