[1.0.0] Steam Cloud Storage 'sync' problem

[DRY411S]

If I sync factorio with Steam Cloud then I cannot manage my old saves that I want to delete.

• I cannot delete them from Steam Cloud Storage directly since Steam Cloud storage does not allow this for factorio or any other game
• I cannot delete them in game (and hope that some kind of sync with Steam Cloud will occur), since this feature is not implemented
• If I use Windows file explorer to find the saves and delete them, the next time I start factorio, Steam Cloud synchronisation downloads them again to my PC!
• If I completely uninstall factorio in Steam, delete all the saves, then reinstall again, I get all the saves back

[posila]

I cannot delete them in game (and hope that some kind of sync with Steam Cloud will occur), since this feature is not implemented

You can delete saves in game, there is a red trash button (at least in Load Game menu, not sure about Save Game menu). This is pretty much as good as it gets ... I don't know how to solve this problem better then having delete button in the game, and that already exists.

If I use Windows file explorer to find the saves and delete them, the next time I start factorio, Steam Cloud synchronisation downloads them again to my PC!

If you Alt+Tab out of the game and delete saves while the game is running, Steam should notice files were deleted when you exit the game and update the Cloud storage accordingly. This might not work in the future though. There are issues with Steam Cloud rolling back saves folder to weeks old state, or deleting saves that it shouldn't, so we might stop using "legacy" Steam Cloud sync, which is just pointing Steam to folder it should sync, and manage files in Cloud storage explicitly through Steam API, in which case in-game delete button would probably become only way how to delete saves that are being synced.

[DRY411S]

You can delete saves in game, there is a red trash button (at least in Load Game menu, not sure about Save Game menu). This is pretty much as good as it gets ... I don't know how to solve this problem better then having delete button in the game, and that already exists.

Ah, I've never noticed that before. Deleting the files that way does cause them to be deleted from Steam Cloud. Presumably because the game is still running? So your method below may work too. I'll give it a try. But I discovered the problem when I switched sync on after it had been off for a year, during which I changed my PC. factorio did not start for almost 45 minutes whilst Steam downloaded almost 150 save files. I don't want to hit that in-game delete button 150 times.

If you Alt+Tab out of the game and delete saves while the game is running, Steam should notice files were deleted when you exit the game and update the Cloud storage accordingly. This might not work in the future though. There are issues with Steam Cloud rolling back saves folder to weeks old state, or deleting saves that it shouldn't, so we might stop using "legacy" Steam Cloud sync, which is just pointing Steam to folder it should sync, and manage files in Cloud storage explicitly through Steam API, in which case in-game delete button would probably become only way how to delete saves that are being synced.

I have found a way outside game to force deletes by using powershell to set the length to zero of the files I don't want. Steam Conflict runs, and uploading 0 length files causes Steam Cloud to delete them. Then I can delete them from my PC.