Polygon: PS5 save files can only be backed up to PlayStation Plus

[M1138147]

27 minutes ago, Spaz said:

It’s nothing new. I’ve had to come to grips and accept it. 
 

While I don’t like much of what encompasses modern gaming today, I don’t think I can leave gaming altogether anytime soon, because I still enjoy gaming and going after trophies.

its kind of sad when you think about it, but i guess it is what it is. that's why i no longer read comments on  gaming sites. pure cancer. 

 

 I'm obsessed with goals and purpose. so i wont ever quit hunting achievements and trophy. il take the good with the bad. plus I'm a sucker for stories.

[mvpeast]

Less cheating/hacking if saves are only backed up to ps plus, maybe? I think it’s actually a good idea if it works like that.

Edited November 11, 2020 by mvpeast

[Swotam]

This hasn’t changed in the day one system software update, it’s still PS+ only for game save copies. Maybe they’ll change it in the future, maybe not, but I tend to think this is intentional and not something they simply didn’t have time to add for release. We shall see.

[machaesthetic]

This and the removal of the internet browser both seem intended to cut down on cheaters/hackers. Considering the massive amount of cheaters on PS3/PSV games, I am glad they are making these changes. Global rarity percentages for PS3 and PSV are oftentimes 25-50x higher (or even more) than the legitimate rarity percentages. Unfortunately, due to custom timestamps on PS3 and PSV, it can make finding these cheaters a lot more difficult.

 

I am glad they are taking steps towards better security, and don't really care about external drive backup saves. If you own a PS5 and don't for some reason have PS+, then you could just use the trial or just get a 14 day card when you want to back up or download saves. 

[Realtione]

It's a pity that most of the people only want to see through cheater removal. 

 

1. If I am going to choose between cheaters and anti-consumerism, I am going to choose the first. Fuck the latter. There is that.

2. Most of the people back in PS4 either save scummed or popped trophies in an easier way, I did too and I do not feel a real shame there. Even could be more legit than PS3/Vita days. However, I must say, although it is correct that ps3-vita were crowded with cheaters (not only for trophy hunting), sending a next-gen console into those days just bc cheating is hilarious. 

 

We all know that sony became greedy af and this is, quite obv., one of their newest anti-consumer policy. USB is an easy, universal storage unit and it is still reliable. Sony is in a place where they should be removing the goddamn multiplayer function from the ps plus and expand their PS Plus Collection. But no, they decline to add new games into the PS Plus collection, keep multiplayer behind paywalls, and now carry the savefiles behind the goddamn paywall. Great. Keep cheering for cheater removal and yadda yadda as if there are no other ways to remove them. 

 

 

 

*This comment is made by a person who is not on the leaderboards. I don't promote cheating in multiplayer games, I don't promote trophy cheating essentially but not everyone gives a damn. Those trophies are still ultra-rare on the console. Beyond that, people should be able to save scum or hack on their offline saves, who cares? Don't they want to get over PCs? Then give more freedom. PS Plus should not be a thing if not for additional games given by it. 

[DividedByMankind]

On 9.11.2020 at 7:56 PM, diskdocx said:

It's hilarious that you think this has anything to do with cheating. Sony doesn't care at all about trophy cheating. This is about Sony forcing more people to buy Plus if they want to back up their saves. And removing options to let them have any other method to do so.

 

If anything, I would argue that this type of pay-walling of features encourages more people to use custom firmware options.

Lets be honost, the usb port is not used to back up saves(like some are claiming). They are used to take out the saves and alter them.

 

So i dont think anything with my comment. I know what i commented and it is actually the sad truth.  Also how many people do you think are still on the LB and ruining it for legitmate players with so called legitmate timestamps that are actually cheated?

 

I would say that its alot of cheaters on the LB with legitmate timestamps that is ruining the leaderboards. So i really hope sony has implemented only backup saves through PS+.  

 

And also the trophy rarity will be much better.

 

 

[Zenpai]

12 hours ago, DividedByMankind said:

Lets be honest, the USB port is not used to back up saves (like some are claiming). They are used to take out the saves and alter them.

 

I have no idea where you got your info (if indeed you got it somewhere), but it's clearly wrong. I back up my saves through USB all the time. And not once did I even think about altering them.

 

To be honest, I agree 100% with what @Realtione said. If it's a choice between a feature that could be immensely valuable and just preventing cheating, then you should just allow USB backups. Period. Not to mention, you can still back up PS4 game saves, so this was clearly a conscious decision by Sony that in no way has anything to do with cheater prevention.

 

And to be honest, even if people did alter their saves... who cares?

 

Is it because of the leaderboards? I have no idea why people care so much about them in the first place. Just play your games, have fun, and let people play their games the way they want to. People mess with saves on PC all the time and it's no less a thriving marketplace because of it.

[Lance_87]

On 15/11/2020 at 11:21 PM, DividedByMankind said:

Lets be honost, the usb port is not used to back up saves(like some are claiming).

 

Speak for yourself. Not everyone here is a cheater, i for example didn't know that it was used for cheating. Excuse me for not following the hacking scene.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lance_87

[scemopagliaccioh]

15 hours ago, Realtione said:

It's a pity that most of the people only want to see through cheater removal. 

 

1. If I am going to choose between cheaters and anti-consumerism, I am going to choose the first. Fuck the latter. There is that.

2. Most of the people back in PS4 either save scummed or popped trophies in an easier way, I did too and I do not feel a real shame there. Even could be more legit than PS3/Vita days. However, I must say, although it is correct that ps3-vita were crowded with cheaters (not only for trophy hunting), sending a next-gen console into those days just bc cheating is hilarious. 

 

We all know that sony became greedy af and this is, quite obv., one of their newest anti-consumer policy. USB is an easy, universal storage unit and it is still reliable. Sony is in a place where they should be removing the goddamn multiplayer function from the ps plus and expand their PS Plus Collection. But no, they decline to add new games into the PS Plus collection, keep multiplayer behind paywalls, and now carry the savefiles behind the goddamn paywall. Great. Keep cheering for cheater removal and yadda yadda as if there are no other ways to remove them. 

 

 

 

*This comment is made by a person who is not on the leaderboards. I don't promote cheating in multiplayer games, I don't promote trophy cheating essentially but not everyone gives a damn. Those trophies are still ultra-rare on the console. Beyond that, people should be able to save scum or hack on their offline saves, who cares? Don't they want to get over PCs? Then give more freedom. PS Plus should not be a thing if not for additional games given by it. 

Never understood the anti-cheating argument tbh, we have an efficient team for  cheated trophies, and it's not like the cloud saves don't give you a BIG  pay to win advantage,  for example, I can't use it due to my plus/bought games being connected to a level 1 account to fight hackers after the 2011 hacking, so I had to work extra hard for the 10 online  wins in a row trophy for Mortal Kombat 10, where one with cloud  just had to download  the save whenever they lost.

It's just Sony gutting more functioms, and  testing the waters if the playerbase accepts it.

Edited November 16, 2020 by scemopagliaccioh

[BeautifulTorment]

The concept that some people are hocking in here, that using a usb drive to back up your saves is only something done by cheaters, is hilarious, and frankly, downright fucking stupid.

[B1rvine]

I'm sure I'll get backlash, but I'm glad they did this. 

 

I'd rather have system security over being able to back up saves (on a USB) that I never end up using again anyway. On the off-chance I do replay a game after a platinum/100%, the save file is still on my console itself. For the people that truly need backups, there's an alternative method with the cloud. 

 

Remember when people burned CD-ROMs? When's the last time anyone used one of those for old data? Get with the digital era, people.

[diskdocx]

8 minutes ago, B1rvine said:

I'm sure I'll get backlash, but I'm glad they did this. 

 

I'd rather have system security over being able to back up saves (on a USB) that I never end up using again anyway. On the off-chance I do replay a game after a platinum/100%, the save file is still on my console itself. For the people that truly need backups, there's an alternative method with the cloud. 

 

Remember when people burned CD-ROMs? When's the last time anyone used one of those for old data? Get with the digital era, people.

You've obviously never been hit with a bug or glitch or corrupted save. I have. Several times. Not saying this is a common occurrence, but it does happen. This really isn't just about archiving saves, but is also useful for games you are currently playing. I don't think that type of feature should be paywalled behind Plus. Even though I subscribe. Removal of a feature that has been available in some format for free on pretty much every system going back decades is shitty.

 

I know very little about the PS4 hacking or security features, but if people think disabling USB will completely lock down a console, I suspect they will be incorrect.

 

I will say this as well, having spent some time on the PS5 this past weekend, the UI is not terribly user friendly when it comes to uploading and downloading saves to the cloud now. Unless I am missing something, it requires several sub menu dives to get to.

[woz3323]

Also, keep in mind that if a family plays on a console, the games downloaded and online work for everyone but the cloud is exclusive to the person with plus.  So if someone other than the primary needs USB if they want to back up a save file for one of the games that are released with bugs and can have their save files corrupted (we’ve all played one).  
 

Aiming to change features because of nefarious people usually negatively impacts a much larger group of honest consumers.  

[Swotam]

I’ll be honest when I say I’m surprised how many people think this is related to trophies, or cheating, but that’s probably because I never gave much thought to cheating to get trophies and to be honest until it was brought up to many times in this thread I wasn’t actually aware it was a thing. Of course, I don’t care about leaderboards or completion percentages, so maybe that’s why I’ve never bothered to think about it,

 

Regardless, I really don’t think Sony gives a rats ass about people cheating to get trophies, or leaderboards, or any of that stuff. Why would they? Sony is a business, they care about money, so unless people messing around with save files to get trophies is costing them noticeable amounts of money (which I seriously doubt) they really won’t care one way or another. Why anyone would think a multi-billion dollar corporation would care about some tiny percentage of their user base unlocking trophies they didn’t earn, to get on a leaderboard that is utterly meaningless beyond a certain segment of the trophy hunting community, really is beyond me. Follow the money, there’s your answer.

[LabyrinthWorm]

I'm more annoyed that they took away the ability to hide things from your library/purchased items. All those demos, etc. are back that they (not so long ago) let us hide...

[Lance_87]

1 hour ago, LabyrinthWorm said:

I'm more annoyed that they took away the ability to hide things from your library/purchased items. All those demos, etc. are back that they (not so long ago) let us hide...

 

Really? Can't you hide them from the PSN website? Or the PS4?

[machaesthetic]

6 hours ago, BeautifulTorment said:

The concept that some people are hocking in here, that using a usb drive to back up your saves is only something done by cheaters, is hilarious, and frankly, downright fucking stupid.

All you need to do is look at the global percentages for any difficult PS3/PSV game and you will see the sheer number of cheaters there are. The global percentages are 20-50x or higher than they are on PSNP (when global percentages should always be much lower than PSNP), and this massive discrepancy is purely from the cheaters which PSNP removes (and there are undoubtedly custom timestamp cheaters who haven't been removed yet). 

 

Steam achievements are already a joke with SAM, so I am glad Sony is taking some measures towards security considering what happened to PS3 and PSV. 

 

Really I think the only issue is not that the backups are digital only, but that PS+ is required for these digital backup saves. However, that is more of a complaint about how PS+ is mandatory in general for online play, and unfortunately paying for XBL was normalized for around a decade so Sony finally implemented paid online as well. 

Edited November 16, 2020 by machaesthetic

[Large_Tuna000]

I found that you can't manage your saved data (same game) on PS5; you can either delete them all or keep them all which is really frustrating.

Not sure if they're going to patch it or not.

[NOWITSREYNTIME17]

On 11/6/2020 at 11:51 AM, OnlyCass said:

Anyone buying a PS5 and not signing up for PS Plus to get 20 of the greatest games available on playstation included in the subscription is mad in my eyes.

if they have all of the games and don't care for online then it would be extremely dumb to get it

[Pumpkin Head Cthulhu]

On 11/6/2020 at 10:04 PM, ArmoredSnowman said:

This is most likely done to prevent save modding. 

the part of that that makes me laugh is that they are only hurting the legit consumers. If a hacker wants to MOD a save this wont stop them, back on PS3 they tried this with "copying prohibited" saves and people still managed to hack those games.

[NOWITSREYNTIME17]

On 11/6/2020 at 8:43 PM, LegacyJKO09 said:

not a big deal at all.  Who doesn't have ps plus that is a longtime sony user? 

if you barely play sony titles, then yeah you don't need plus or to be backing up saves in the first place. 

this statement is so dumb. Tons of long term fans don't have ps plus

[Rias Gremory]

 

Sony can suck it.

[Realtione]

21 hours ago, scemopagliaccioh said:

Never understood the anti-cheating argument tbh, we have an efficient team for  cheated trophies, and it's not like the cloud saves don't give you a BIG  pay to win advantage,  for example, I can't use it due to my plus/bought games being connected to a level 1 account to fight hackers after the 2011 hacking, so I had to work extra hard for the 10 online  wins in a row trophy for Mortal Kombat 10, where one with cloud  just had to download  the save whenever they lost.

It's just Sony gutting more functioms, and  testing the waters if the playerbase accepts it.

 

I thought the team is efficient as well because here I am, removed from the leaderboard because I save scummed in UC1 and 3 to pop crushing/collectibles easier, only to take a treasure and see all collectibles popped without my knowledge and got removed, lol.

 

I mean, it is not easy for the cheater removal team, that is sure. And before anything else, someone got to notice the disorder and got to report it. It could be bug, cheat without intention or with intention does not really matter as most of the times the cheater team removes everyone if there is no solid proof. 

 

If it's all about cheating, to what extent we should talk about it? People pay not only for individual services but trophy services and syncing them, people boost trophies, do savescumming, use glitches in earlier versions. I mean, are we going to separate cheating between soft and hard cheating or what? We all know that there could be any savescummed/cheated games in the leaderboards but let's face that as life is not completely fair and you can't track down everything... You are not allowed to access to psn plus if your software is not updated, that is already fucked up as it is. 

 

On the other hand, what bothers me is that the fact they still allow PS4 save transferring via USB lol. So it seems sony gave up on ps4 saves but suddenly they care more about their ps5 system integrity. I wouldn't bite that a bit. It is already mentioned above but I don't want to see copy-protected saves or any savefiles behind online cloud saves. If you are not potato -ehm- like Nintendo your system won't get CFWed easily. On the other hand, as again mentioned above, hackers may still CFW PS5 or find a way behind cloud storage and access to save files. We'll see that. 

Edited November 17, 2020 by Realtione

[MrBasia]

For me, most annoying is file save limit - how come there is 1000 save limit?

Some games use one file for all your save slots - great.

But some will use one file per save - for example Xcom 2 - i had like 100 saves there - used 10% of the limit - 100 GB is just marketing crap - your average save would have to be 100MB...

 

Without USB backup, there would be no way to backup my saves above the 1000 limit...

[Lance_87]

38 minutes ago, MrBasia said:

For me, most annoying is file save limit - how come there is 1000 save limit?

Some games use one file for all your save slots - great.

But some will use one file per save - for example Xcom 2 - i had like 100 saves there - used 10% of the limit - 100 GB is just marketing crap - your average save would have to be 100MB...

 

Without USB backup, there would be no way to backup my saves above the 1000 limit...

 

The limit is still 1000 even on newer systems? Jesus Christ. I thought it was exclusive to PS3.

 

Just look at Wipeout HD that literally created one savegame for every Time Trial ghost.

 

And i don't think it'll be 100GB on PS5, but probably a lot more. It becomes bigger in the next generation, because the savegames become bigger.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Lance_87