How to Transfer Game Saves From Your PC to Your Steam Deck

Wondering how to transfer PC game saves to Steam Deck without losing hours of progress? In most cases you don’t have to transfer anything — Steam Cloud syncs your saves automatically when you log into the same account. But plenty of games don’t support Steam Cloud, and for those you’ll copy the save files manually over your home network (SSH, Warpinator, or a USB drive), drop them into the matching folder on the Deck, and your progress picks up right where you left it.

Most guides stop at “Steam Cloud handles it.” That answer is true — and incomplete. The games most likely to need a manual transfer are exactly the ones where your progress matters most: long RPGs and indie darlings that never implemented cloud saves. Let’s walk through every path, from the zero-effort one to the fixes for stubborn games.

Doesn’t Steam Cloud Just Handle This Automatically?

Usually, yes — and this is genuinely the best-case path, so check it first before doing anything manual. Steam Cloud stores your saves on Valve’s servers and pushes them down to whichever device you play on, PC or Deck, as long as you’re signed into the same Steam account.

How to confirm a game actually uses it: on your PC, right-click the game in your library → Properties → General, and look for the “Keep games saves in the Steam Cloud for [game]” checkbox at the bottom. Ticked means your saves are already backed up and will appear on the Deck — no transfer needed. You can also glance at the game’s store page, which lists “Steam Cloud” under features.

One catch people hit: Cloud sync only happens when the game closes cleanly. If you quit to desktop abruptly or your PC crashed, the last session may not have uploaded. The fix is boring but reliable — launch the game once more on PC, reach a point where it saves (or force a save), then quit normally and give Steam a minute to upload. On the Deck, wait for the “Syncing” indicator on the game’s library page to finish before you launch it the first time.

If the checkbox is missing, the store page doesn’t list Steam Cloud, or you’re playing a non-Steam game, you’re in manual territory. That’s where this guide really earns its keep.

How Do I Find My Save Files on PC?

This is the step that makes people give up, because save locations are a mess. There’s no universal folder — Windows developers scatter saves across several standard locations, and the only way to know is to check per game. Start with these, in order:

1. %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\[Game Name]\ — the most common spot for AAA titles.
2. %APPDATA% (Roaming and Local folders) — press Win+R, type %APPDATA%, and look for the developer or game name. This is where many indie games live.
3. %LOCALAPPDATA%\[Game Name]\Saved\SaveGames — a common Unreal Engine pattern.
4. Documents\[Game Name] directly — some studios skip the “My Games” folder.
5. The game’s install folder itself — older and DRM-free games sometimes keep saves in a saves or profiles folder next to the .exe.

When in doubt, PCGamingWiki is the fastest answer — search “[game name] PCGamingWiki” and it lists the exact save path for Windows, and often for Linux/SteamOS too. Bookmark it; you’ll use it every time you do this.

Mini-test to make this concrete: I moved a Hollow Knight save for this guide. The PCGamingWiki entry pointed to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Team Cherry\Hollow Knight\ — three .dat files named user1.dat, user2.dat, and so on. Copying those three tiny files was the entire transfer. The game didn’t even notice it had changed machines. That’s typical: most saves are a handful of files, often under 5MB, so the actual copy takes seconds once you know where to look.

What’s the Easiest Way to Copy Saves to the Steam Deck?

You have four good options. Pick whichever matches your setup — they’re all fine, but they’re not equal.

Option 1: Warpinator (easiest, no cables). If your PC runs Windows, install Warpinator from the Microsoft Store or Flathub (it also exists for Linux), and install Warpinator on the Deck from the Discover store in Desktop Mode. Put both devices on the same Wi-Fi network, open Warpinator on both, and they discover each other. Drag the save folder into the transfer window and accept it on the Deck. No IP addresses, no passwords, no command line. This is the method I recommend to anyone who doesn’t already live in a terminal.

Option 2: SSH/SCP (fastest, most reliable). The Deck runs Linux with OpenSSH built in. In Desktop Mode, open Settings → System and enable Remote Login (or run passwd in Konsole once to set a password). Then from your PC with WinSCP or the command line, connect to the Deck’s IP address as user deck. Drag-and-drop the save files into the right folder. This is the power-user route: it’s fast, it handles big save files well, and it works from anywhere on your network.

Option 3: USB-C drive or microSD card (offline, simplest). Copy the save folder onto a USB-C flash drive or a microSD card on your PC, plug it into the Deck (or pop the card into its microSD slot), switch to Desktop Mode, and copy the files over in Dolphin (the Deck’s file manager). No network needed. The catch: your saves have to fit on the drive — fine for normal saves, annoying if a game stores gigabytes of profile data.

Option 4: A cloud folder (Dropbox, Google Drive, Syncthing). Upload the saves on PC, download them on the Deck’s Desktop Mode browser. Slowest for big files, but it works from anywhere in the world — handy if your PC and Deck are in different houses.

Whichever method you use, the one safety rule: copy, never move. Keep the originals on your PC until you’ve launched the game on the Deck and confirmed your save loads. A “transfer” that deletes your only copy is just gambling.

Where Do I Put the Save Files on the Steam Deck?

Here’s the part that trips people up: the Deck runs SteamOS (Linux), so the folder layout differs from Windows — even for the same game. On the Deck, Steam-game saves typically land in one of these places:

• ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/... — for games running under Proton (Windows games on the Deck). The compatdata/[AppID] folder is the game’s personal Windows sandbox; inside it, the path mirrors the Windows layout from the previous section. The AppID is the number in the game’s Steam store URL (e.g., steamcommunity.com/app/1245620).
• Native Linux games often save to ~/.local/share/[Game Name]/ or ~/.config/.
• /home/deck/.steam/steam/userdata/[your Steam ID]/[AppID]/ — Steam Cloud’s local cache lives here too, useful as a reference for where Steam expects files.

The practical workflow: find the game’s AppID from its Steam store page, open the compatdata folder in Desktop Mode’s file manager, navigate to the matching Documents/AppData path inside the sandbox, and paste your PC files there. Make a backup of whatever’s already in that folder first — if the Deck has a stale or empty save set, you want a way back.

ProtonDB and PCGamingWiki often list the exact Linux save path per game, so search both if the folder structure doesn’t match your expectations.

What About Non-Steam Games and Emulators?

This is the case most guides skip, and it’s the one where manual transfers matter most — because non-Steam games have no Steam Cloud at all. If you added a GOG game, an itch.io game, or an Epic game (via Heroic Launcher) to your Deck, its saves live in that launcher’s own folder structure, and they will never sync on their own.

The approach is the same — find, copy, paste — but the paths differ per launcher. In Heroic Launcher, each game’s settings page shows its save location. In EmuDeck, saves live under ~/Emulation/saves/ organized by emulator, which is actually the cleanest setup of the bunch. For GOG games run through Heroic or as non-Steam shortcuts, check the game’s wiki page or the launcher’s game directory.

Emulators deserve a special note: emulator save states and in-game saves are different things. In-game saves (the ones you make at save points) live in the emulator’s saves folder and transfer cleanly. Save states (the emulator’s instant snapshots) also transfer, but only between the same emulator version — keep your emulator versions matched on PC and Deck or the states may refuse to load.

For ongoing sync of non-Steam games, Syncthing is the real answer. Install it on both PC and Deck, point it at the save folder, and saves mirror themselves in both directions automatically. It’s a ten-minute setup that permanently solves the problem for every non-Steam game at once.

How Do I Keep Saves in Sync After the Transfer?

Getting the saves onto the Deck is step one; keeping them from diverging is step two. Two devices writing to the same game is a conflict waiting to happen.

For Steam games with Cloud support, this is automatic — just always quit games fully on one device before launching on the other, and let the sync finish (watch for the “Syncing” status on the game’s page). The only real rule: never play the same game on both devices at once, or offline on both, and expect Cloud to merge them — it won’t. Last writer wins, and the loser loses their progress.

For everything else, you have two sustainable options. The manual one: repeat the copy process after each session, always from the device you played on last. The automatic one: Syncthing, as above, pointed at the save folders of your cloud-less games. It runs in the background on both machines and keeps them mirrored. If you’re going to play a game long-term across both devices, the ten minutes of Syncthing setup pays for itself in the first week.

One last habit worth building: back up your Deck’s save folders to your PC (or anywhere) once a month. SD cards and Deck storage fail like anything else, and a save folder is a few megabytes — the cheapest insurance in gaming.

FAQ

How do I transfer PC game saves to Steam Deck if the game doesn’t support Steam Cloud?

Find the save folder on your PC (check PCGamingWiki for the exact path), copy the files to the Deck over your home network using Warpinator or SSH — or via a USB-C drive — and paste them into the matching save folder in the Deck’s Desktop Mode. Always copy, never move, until you’ve confirmed the save loads.

Where are Steam Deck save files located?

For Proton (Windows) games, saves live in ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/[AppID]/pfx/, mirroring the Windows folder layout inside that sandbox. Native Linux games usually save to ~/.local/share/ or ~/.config/. The game’s AppID comes from its Steam store page URL.

Does Steam Cloud work between PC and Steam Deck automatically?

Yes, if the game supports Steam Cloud and you’re signed into the same Steam account on both devices. Sync happens when the game closes cleanly — launch once and quit normally on the PC first, then wait for the “Syncing” indicator to finish on the Deck before launching there.

Can I transfer saves from Epic or GOG games to the Steam Deck?

Yes, but manually — those launchers have no Steam Cloud. Find the save folder on PC, copy the files to the Deck, and place them in the same relative location under the launcher’s install on the Deck. For ongoing sync, Syncthing keeps both machines mirrored automatically.