Zealous save scumming in Baldur's Gate 3 could wipe your saved games on GeForce Now

11.08.2023 - 17:13 / pcgamer.com

Due to storage limits on the GeForce Now service, Nvidia recommends players on the service limit the number of manual saves they make in Baldur's Gate 3, and also place limits on the number of autosaves and quicksaves the game allows in settings. Apparently you could run the risk of saved data loss should you smash F5 too often.

«Nvidia is aware that some users may experience data loss due to the storage limits. We are working to resolve the issue,» a warning message on GeForce Now says.

«For now, users should limit the number of manual saves to prevent saved game loss. You may also limit the number of Auto and Quicksaves to 10 via game settings: Options -> Gameplay -> Save Option.»

You still have save files to play with. Enough for a little save scumming at key moments, I'm sure. Though it could require a change of tact for players that are looking to reverse any catastrophic events that might happen with extremely regular quicksaves, such as dying or annoying the party member you have the biggest crush on.

I've asked Nvidia for clarification on how many saves we're talking here: 20, 200, 2000?! You could gobble up gigabytes of storage with around 100 save files. We've checked out our own save folders on Steam and found that each save takes up around 19MB on average. Our Harvey has reached the game's third act with around 83 save files, and he's rocking a 1.6GB save folder.

At some point it appears gamers may be hitting the maximum amount of storage allocated to them on GeForce Now's servers. I've checked in with Nvidia to see if that's a figure it's prepared to disclose.

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The GeForce Now save retention policy states that Nvidia will keep saves stored on its servers «indefinitely» for Ultimate or Priority memberships—basically anyone that pays to use the platform and skip the queues. Meanwhile free users have their saves deleted after six months.

Nvidia says it's working on resolving the issue, though there's no timeline on a fix. What that might entail isn't clear. Leaning on Steam's cloud save servers? Maybe. A little more storage divided out to players? Cloud service providers shudder at the mere thought of it. GeForce Now has 20 million users as of last year. While far fewer will be playing Baldur's Gate 3, it has enjoyed a mega launch week rising swiftly to become one of the top 10 most played games on Steam. Even a small tweak to storage space for each user is an exponentially bigger problem at that sort of scale.

For now, it looks like your best bet is to just keep the save files to a reasonable amount, or rotate