Namely, the latest blog post concerning the development of the Steam Deck announced an entirely new feature: the so-called Dynamic Cloud Sync. According to Valve, this upgrade to the existing Steam Cloud infrastructure will allow players to move from a full-blooded gaming PC over to the Deck and vice-versa without losing in-game progress, and without needing to worry about breaking their save games.
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As per the official announcement, Dynamic Cloud Sync will upload save game data to the user’s cloud repository whenever they put the device they’ve been using to sleep. If the user subsequently begins using their second device to play that same game, Steam will download your progression and allow you to keep playing seamlessly. Dynamic Cloud Sync is a fully optional feature, however, and the blog post does not go into detail on whether it affects a game’s ‘Deck Verified’ rating or not.
Though the feature is completely free to use for any developer that has or will release their game on Steam, enabling it is not mandatory. As the blog post says, the baseline implementation of Steam Cloud save sharing will work regardless of a game’s Dynamic Cloud Sync status. However, users that use the Steam Deck’s suspend feature without shutting the game down will be prompted to do so, if they attempt to play the same game on their other devices.
While Valve’s dedication to making its upcoming handheld device as cheap and easy to use as possible is praiseworthy, especially in the case of Steam Deck’s anti-cheat software support, the fact that features such as the Dynamic Cloud Sync are optional could lead to confusion, as the marketplace will be fragmented between various levels of Deck feature implementation across the thousands of games that are available on Steam.
Many developers are bound to implement the Dynamic Cloud Sync API into games that are still supported or will be coming out in the future, but this still leaves a huge library of games fully unsupported. Even the basic Steam Cloud save sharing isn’t always a given, especially in the case of particularly old titles. Since Valve’s console is still on track to ship before the end of February, early adopters will soon have the opportunity to see for themselves if the Deck delivers in this regard.
Steam Deck is set to start getting shipped to early adopters this February, while its retail availability remains a complete unknown.
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Source: Steam
