🧞 Game Save Genie

Steam Cloud for the games that don't have it.

Automatic, versioned, self-hosted cloud save sync for PC games — Hydra and manual installs, GOG offline installers, repacks, anything a launcher isn't protecting. Your saves, your cloud, no subscription.

gamesavegenie website →

Why this exists

If you play games outside Steam/Epic/Xbox, nothing is protecting your saves. One corrupted file, one Windows reinstall, one "wait, which PC did I play on last?" and dozens of hours are gone. Paid save-sync services cap your history at a couple of backups and delete everything when you stop paying.

Game Save Genie runs quietly in the background and gives you what the launchers give their games:

• 🕹️ Knows 19,000+ games — save locations detected via the open-source Ludusavi database, plus process watching to know when you're playing
• 🎮 Emulators too — gsg add --path backs up any folder or file (RetroArch, PCSX2, Dolphin, memcards, save states), so games Ludusavi doesn't know are covered as well
• 💾 Backs up automatically — when a game closes, and every 10 minutes while it runs
• 🔔 Tells you when something breaks — a tray icon shows at a glance whether your saves are safe (and goes red, with a notification, if a backup or upload fails) instead of failing silently in the background
• 🕰️ Every session is a version — immutable, checksummed snapshots; roll back to any point with gsg restore --version
• ☁️ Your own cloud — Google Drive (free 15 GB), OneDrive, any S3 bucket, or anything rclone speaks; retention is enforced so it never fills up, and delta uploads only send the save files that changed (an unchanged 40 MB slot is never re-uploaded)
• 🖥️ Follows you between PCs — gsg pull restores on any machine, remapping paths saved under a different username on Windows, Linux or macOS
• 🔒 Paranoid by design — downloads are verified before anything is touched, a safety backup is taken before every restore, restores never run while the game is, and a strictly-newer rule means offline progress is never clobbered

Steam/Epic/Xbox games are detected and skipped automatically — those launchers already sync their own saves.

Get started in 30 seconds

Windows installer (recommended): grab GameSaveGenie-Setup.exe from Releases — per-user, no admin needed, adds gsg to your terminal, offers to run setup when done. Portable: gsg.exe from the same Releases page — no install at all. From source (Python 3.10+): pip install git+https://github.com/Vasanthdev2004/Game-Save-Genie

Then:

gsg

That's the whole setup. A wizard finds your games, connects your cloud (Google Drive/OneDrive open a browser — sign in, click Allow, done), and offers start-at-boot. From then on gsg auto protects everything, hands-free. Ludusavi and rclone are downloaded automatically on first use.

Once you're set up, running gsg again opens the dashboard — your games, every version, and a one-key restore. No ids to copy.

Homelab? Run your own save server with one docker compose up and connect it with gsg setup-s3 — see docker/README.md. Works with any S3-compatible store (MinIO, Garage, TrueNAS…), supports per-friend accounts, and your saves never leave your network.

Somewhere gsg can't run? The cloud layout is documented in CLOUD_FORMAT.md — content-addressed blobs plus a small JSON manifest per backup, reachable with rclone and sha256sum from a shell script. A handheld or NAS that writes that layout produces storage gsg understands and deduplicates against; a one-command restore from a device-written backup is not there yet (#43).

Status: single-machine backup on Windows is stable and used daily. Cross-machine sync (gsg pull) and Linux/Steam Deck support are beta — solid in testing, but not yet battle-tested across many real setups. Keep a second copy of anything precious for now, and please file an issue with anything you hit — that feedback is what moves it out of beta.

How it compares

	Game Save Genie	Ludusavi	Game Backup Monitor	Hydra Cloud	Syncthing DIY
Auto-backup on game close	✅	❌	✅	✅	➖ folder sync only
Periodic backup during play	✅	❌	✅	❌	➖
Automatic cloud restore	✅	❌ manual	⚠️ via a sync folder	❌	➖ no game awareness
Native cloud (direct, delta uploads)	✅	✅	❌ needs Dropbox etc.	✅ their servers	➖ folder sync
Cross-machine path remapping	✅	❌	❌	✅	❌
Version history	✅ per session	✅	✅	⚠️ 2 per game	❌ conflict files
Storage you own	✅	✅	⚠️ sync folder	❌ their servers	✅
Free	✅	✅	✅	❌ subscription*	✅

_{*Hydra Cloud is subscription-only, caps each backup at 500 MB and 2 versions per game, and deletes saves 7 days after a subscription ends. Game Backup Monitor is a solid tool that also auto-backs-up and auto-restores — its difference from Game Save Genie is cloud: "cloud" in GBM means pointing its backups at a separate folder-sync client (e.g. Dropbox), whereas Game Save Genie uploads directly to your own cloud/S3/self-hosted server with delta transfers, unlimited versions, and cross-machine path remapping. Comparison reflects mid-2026; check each project for current features. Ludusavi is a fantastic backup engine — Game Save Genie builds on it and adds the automation layer.}

Everyday commands

gsg auto                  # the only command most people need — watch + backup + restore
gsg auto --install        # start hidden at logon (per-user, no admin needed)
gsg ui                    # interactive dashboard: browse versions, restore by arrow key

gsg status                # per-game overview, storage meter, quota warning
gsg scan                  # what's installed (--source all to include Steam/Epic/Xbox)
gsg add "Elden Ring" --exe eldenring.exe    # track something manually
gsg add "RetroArch" --path ~/.config/retroarch/saves --path ~/.config/retroarch/states --exe retroarch
                            # emulator / custom folders — repeat --path as needed

gsg backup [game-id]      # back up now (--dry-run previews, changes nothing)
gsg versions <game-id>    # local history      gsg cloud-list <game-id>  # cloud history
gsg restore <game-id> [--version ID]         # roll back to any local snapshot
gsg pull <game-id> [--version ID]            # restore from the cloud (any machine)
gsg pull --all            # catch this machine up on everything that's behind

gsg pause / resume <game-id>   # exclude/re-include a game
gsg remove <game-id> [--purge] # untrack (--purge deletes local + cloud saves)

Playing on two machines

Run the same setup (same cloud account) on both PCs. Each machine backs itself up; newer cloud saves are pulled down at startup and while a game isn't running. gsg pull --all catches a machine up on demand.

The trust rules that make this safe:

1. Verify first — downloads are integrity-checked and staged before anything on disk changes; a bad download changes nothing.
2. Safety backup always — your current saves are snapshotted before every restore, and the restore aborts if that fails.
3. Strictly newer only — a restore only happens when the cloud is ahead of everything this machine has seen. Played offline? Your progress wins and uploads on next close.
4. Never under a live game — if you're playing, you get a notification instead of a mid-session overwrite.
5. Usernames remapped — saves recorded under C:\Users\alice\... restore correctly for bob, both in Ludusavi's manifest and the backed-up file tree.

Configuration

gsg config shows everything; config lives at %APPDATA%\game-save-genie\Game Save Genie\config.yaml (Windows) or ~/.config/Game Save Genie/ (Linux).

Key	Default	Meaning
max_versions	10	Versions kept per game, locally and in the cloud
rclone_remote_name	–	rclone remote to upload through (set by the wizard)
remote_root	game-save-genie	Folder/bucket on the remote
storage_limit_gb	5.0	Warn in gsg status at 80% (0 = off)
backup_dir	<data>/backups	Local backup root
ludusavi_path / rclone_path	auto-download	Bring your own binaries

Cloud layout: each save file is stored once under its SHA-256 at <remote>:<remote_root>/<game-id>/blobs/<hh>/<hash>, and each version is a small JSON manifest at <game-id>/manifests/<version-id>.json listing that version's files. The manifest is uploaded last, so a version only becomes visible once all its data is there. That is what makes uploads incremental — an unchanged file is never re-sent. (Pre-0.3.0 versions are single zips and are still readable.)

FAQ

Is this safe for my saves? That's the whole design brief. Every restore is preceded by a verified download and a safety backup of your current state; any failure aborts cleanly rather than half-applying. The restore pipeline was built failure-first — see CHANGELOG.

Where do my saves live? In storage you own. Locally, each version is a plain zip of a Ludusavi backup tree that you can open with anything. In the cloud they are stored de-duplicated — file contents under their SHA-256, plus a readable JSON manifest per version — which is what keeps uploads incremental. No accounts, no servers of ours, no telemetry: gsg only ever talks to your configured remote and GitHub (to download the Ludusavi/rclone binaries).

What if I stop using it? Nothing expires and there is no subscription to lapse. Your local snapshots are plain zips of a Ludusavi backup tree, which Ludusavi can restore directly without gsg. The cloud copy is content-addressed, so rebuilding it by hand means following a manifest — plain JSON listing each file's path and hash. gsg is MIT-licensed and self-hosted, so there is no vendor to be cut off by.

Linux / Steam Deck? Beta, and testers are gold. The full pipeline runs on Linux: backup/restore/pull (with Wine-prefix handling), the process watcher, notify-send notifications, Steam detection (native/Deck/Flatpak paths), and gsg auto --install sets up a systemd user service (headless boxes: loginctl enable-linger $USER). What it needs now is real-world mileage — file an issue with anything you hit; see CONTRIBUTING.

Emulator saves? Games Ludusavi doesn't know? Covered since 0.4.0 — gsg add --path backs up any folder or file (RetroArch, PCSX2, Dolphin, memory cards, save states). Repeat --path as needed.

Project structure

src/game_save_genie/
  cli.py            # Typer CLI — all commands and orchestration
  ludusavi.py       # Ludusavi wrapper (scan/backup/restore)
  cloud.py          # rclone wrapper: upload/download/list/prune
  watcher.py        # process watcher (start/close/periodic/idle callbacks)
  sync.py           # pure restore-decision policy (unit-tested)
  remap.py          # cross-machine path remapping
  archive.py        # safe extraction, snapshot zipping, hashing
  database.py       # SQLite version + sync-state tracking
  config.py         # config + tracked-games persistence
  launcher.py       # Steam/Epic/Xbox detection
  notify.py         # file logging + Windows toasts
  models.py         # Pydantic models

Development: pip install -e ".[dev]", then pytest, ruff check src tests, mypy src tests (strict). CI runs all three on Windows and Linux.

License

MIT. Built on the shoulders of Ludusavi and rclone — go star them too.

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_{If Game Save Genie saved your save, a ⭐ helps other players find it.}