When you lose savegames you invested hours in. Recovered my FF5 savegame!

Eh, it happens. If I like the game, I'll just play it again. I've lost saves in multiple RPGs on PS2 for example. 90 hours in FFX, 40 hours in FFX-2, 30 in SMT3 and so many more.

What is the downside to having steam cloud backup your savefiles?

I remember when i was playing FF7 on PS1 i had a save file with many hours in it and some day i tried to load my game and a "corrupted file" message appeared,it was the worst thing for a child,i had to start over again.the same thing happed to couple of my friends also,it was some kind of bug back then for FF7.
Another time a friend of mine wanted to cory a file of FF9 from my memory card to his,he messed up and he deleted my file,i had just finished disc 3,fuck my life yeah?
Well after those 2 happened i always had multiple save files for every RPG i played.

awh sorry to hear :'( i once lost some saves during a computer crash (blue screen) but that was before i got into steam. I really like the cloud system though it's not for everyone.

Sorry to hear that. I hope you find some way to recover the save.

I lost a 250 hour save file on FFVI for the GBA once. Friend wanted to play, she saved over my main file -_-

I was over 50 hours in Fantasy life, and then my 3DS died. Never went back to it.

That sucks... I once had a GTA San Andreas save where I was close to 100 % (only needed to play for maybe two or three hours more) when my little brother played for a bit and overwrote my save with a new game. I never got close to that again (I did play it a lot after, but never really bothered with any side stuff anymore)...

I've lost a few through the years so I feel your pain. I hope recuva does the trick for you :(

Depending on your operating system & file system you may be able to view an older shadow/snapshot copy of the file. In Windows I've used a program called ShadowExplorer that lets you browse previous versions of files on your system. I think on my Windows 8 computer it takes weekly snapshots...

In the old days I had more than a year's progress building my team and characters' attributes in Baseball Stars on NES, then my brother tripped on the cord for the controller and the console fell, the game popped out, and when I put it back in the data had been erased. :'(

Some people complain that cloud saves causes unstability to some games they play, so maybe that was the reason why you turned them off.

I see that happen 3 times with my witcher 2 save game, my luck is that my witcher 1 save has always been read so i could restart with some leverage.

lost all progress in red faction guerrilla after 200+ hours.
fallout 3, 100hs.
risen 2, over 60hs.
witcher 3, 200hs.

replayed and finished all of them, except red faction.

Back in the PlayStation era, it happened to me, a lot.
Whenever I had forgot to remove my memory card my little brother (a bit "unconsciously" though, given his age) used to overwrite my saves :(

On PC it happens rarely as I tend to backup data (lost some savegames recently 'cause my windows suddenly stopped working) :\

View attached image.

I copy important saves into my Dropbox and create a junction to the original place on the HDD - never lost one again \o/

Back in the days I lost some, e.g. I accidentally deleted my save game of A Bug's Life, lost FF8 and Resident Evil 4 save games due to faulty memory cards. :c

that sucks

That's a lot of time lost. That's why I absolutely never turn off cloud.

Sorry bout that man that sucks hopefully you get it back, once my Ps3 wiped all data from it I was salty as fk after that I only used it to play fighting games.

Auch, I feel your pain. Especially in the days before cloudsave, etc adjusts old-man/hipster glasses I remember once in the dark times I was playing the Baldur's Gate 2 expansion pack Throne of Bhaal when I had just made it to the final fight on Core, TPKed three times and then that night my HD crashed...so I had to start the entire game over from the beginning. Worth it, though.

Ouch... I know that feeling. I remember turning off Steam's cloud saving forever because the only time I really needed it, it made things worse. I lost almost 50 hours of The Binding of Isaac some years ago thanks to it. Since then, I make my own backups from time to time or when I finish playing a game. And it's not hard or time wasting as most people think it is. I use WinRAR with the option to store full paths and/or a regedit export if the game saves something in the Windows Registry. The only complicated thing about it is to find all the paths and entries in your system for some games that save in different locations, but not –if not most– games don't support Steam Cloud, so you need to do that anyway if you want proper backups... (:P). After a while, you already know where to look and how games save, so it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes tops to backup the necessary files, and they're easy to restore.

BTW, PCGamingWiki helps with the locations of config and save files in most games.

I've dropped games after losing like 1 hour of playtime.. I can't imagine 50 or 60 hours.

I have a folder in the cloud with save files from all my games, even if they have Steam Cloud, because I don't trust that.

I had Ultima IV for the Commodore 64. I had my save at the entrance to the final dungeon. All I needed to do was type in the final word (it ended up being 'Infinity', but I didn't know it at the time I lent the game out) and I would have completed it had I typed it in when prompted.

Since I was stuck at that point, I lent it to a friend. However, I don't them to copy the game and play that one since there was only one save slot in the game. Of course, I get the game back a while later and decide to finish the game since I had discovered the final word I needed. I load up the game in anticipation! And the game is at the very start of the game, with a brand new character. Thoughts of murder entered my head, but thankfully (more so for him than for me) they passed.

I am not sure about the final tally of hours I put into it, but I imagine it had to be at least 50.

Thank goodness for the C64 emulator, which meant I could play it again (with more/better save options)!