Wouldn't it be great if you could start playing a game on one computer, save it, then pick up where you left off on another computer? Here's how to sync all your game saves with Dropbox.


Why Not Just Use Steam Cloud?

Steam does have a feature like this built in, called Steam Cloud. Unfortunately, Steam Cloud doesn't support all games on the Steam store—just some of them. And, even for the ones it does support (or appears to support), it doesn't always work. So, when Steam Cloud isn't an option, Dropbox is the next best solution: it's reliable, fairly easy to set up, and works great.


How to Sync Game Saves with Dropbox (or Any Other Cloud Service)

When a game goes to load your saves, it looks in its default location, usually somewhere in My Documents. We're going to copy those save files to Dropbox, then create a symbolic link that points to Dropbox from the original save folder. That way, when your game goes looking for a save, it gets redirected to the synced saves in Dropbox.

Step One: Locate Your Game Saves


The first step is easy: figure out where your games store their save files. It's different for every game, but most games store this data in My Documents (either in the My Documents folder or in a "My Games" file within it). If you aren't sure, google around for your specific game to find out where its save files are.

Step Two: Move Your Save Folders to Dropbox


Let's say we want to move our saves for Darksiders, which reside in C:\Users\Whitson\Documents\My Games\Darksiders. Create a folder in your Dropbox for game saves and copy that "Darksiders" folder to it. You should see that it quickly syncs with Dropbox, which means your saves are now available on all your computers.

Step Three: Create Symbolic Links on All Your Computers


Next, we'll need to point each computer to Dropbox for those saves. Rename or delete the game's original save folder (now that it's in Dropbox) and open a Command Prompt as an administrator and run the following command:

mklink /D "C:\Users\Whitson\Documents\My Games\Darksiders" "C:\Users\Whitson\Dropbox\Game Saves\Darksiders"


Replace the first file path with the path to your game's original save folder, and the second file path with the path to your new Dropbox save folder.

Press enter, and it should create the symlink for you. To double check, head back to the original save folder and you should see a shortcut to the new location. Check out the video at the top of this post to see this step in action.


Repeat this process on all your computers, so that whenever you start up the game—no matter what PC you're on—your game gets redirected to the files in your Dropbox folder.

Note: Mac and Linux users can do this as well, it just requires some slightly different commands—check out this post for more info.


Step Four: Game On


When you're done, test it out! Start up your game on one computer, save your game in a random location, and then try starting that game up on computer 2. With any luck, you should be able to load your most recent save file from computer 1!

Video music by Eric Skiff . Title image remixed from vectorlib.com .

