Reinstalling Windows without backing up your game saves means losing potentially hundreds of hours of progress. The tricky part is that no single folder covers every game — saves scatter across AppData, Documents, and launcher-specific locations depending on who made the game.

This guide walks through each major launcher and the common fallback locations to check before you wipe the drive.

Step 0: Enable Steam Cloud for Cloud-Supported Games

If a game supports Steam Cloud and sync is enabled, those saves survive a reinstall automatically. Verify this first:

  1. Right-click the game in Steam
  2. Select Properties › General
  3. Confirm “Keep game saves in the Steam Cloud” is ticked
  4. Check that the Last Sync timestamp is recent

Cloud saves require no manual copying. But it’s still worth backing them up locally — cloud conflicts on first post-reinstall launch can undo your progress if Steam decides the remote version is older.

Steam: Where to Look for Local Saves

For games that store saves locally, check these four paths:

  • %APPDATA%\[GameName]\ — press Win + R to open Run, type the path
  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\[GameName]\ — commonly used by Unreal Engine games
  • Documents\My Games\[GameName]\
  • C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\[SteamID]\[AppID]\remote\

Copy any matching folder to an external drive or cloud storage (Google Drive, OneDrive). Copy the entire folder, not individual files. Many games write multiple companion files (.bak backups, config files, profile metadata) that all need to be present for the save to load correctly.

Epic Games Launcher

Epic Games doesn’t have a universal cloud save feature for every title. Saves are usually stored locally:

  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\[GameName]\Saved\SaveGames\
  • Documents\My Games\[GameName]\

Some Epic-exclusive games (like Fortnite) store progress server-side via your Epic account — those transfer automatically when you sign back in.

EA App (formerly Origin)

Electronic Arts stores saves in:

  • Documents\EA Games\[GameName]\
  • %APPDATA%\EA Games\[GameName]\

EA Play subscribers may have EA Cloud Saves available for some titles, but it’s inconsistent. Manually back up the Documents folder to be certain.

GOG Galaxy

GOG Galaxy has a cloud save feature for compatible titles — look for a cloud icon next to the game in the GOG Galaxy interface. For everything else, saves live locally:

  • %APPDATA%\[GameName]\
  • Documents\My Games\[GameName]\
  • %LOCALAPPDATA%\GOG.com\Galaxy\Applications\[AppID]\

The Universal Fallback Check

If you can’t find a game’s save folder after checking all the above:

  1. Press Win + R, type %APPDATA%, and press Enter
  2. Sort by Date modified — any recently changed folder is probably a game save candidate
  3. Do the same in %LOCALAPPDATA% and Documents\My Games

This catches the long tail of games that use non-standard paths.

Quick Lookup: Exact Save Path for Any Game

Rather than guessing, you can look up the exact save folder and filename for any specific game on this site — including which files to copy and whether cloud sync is active.

Find the save location for your game →