protonscr

Persistent Unable to sync error for only specific games

steamclosed
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#12520 · opened 2025-12-04 by gomander · updated 2025-12-04 · 1 comments · github
Ggomander 2025-12-04 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1763795278
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): CachyOS
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
  • Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
  • GPU: Nvidia RTX 4090

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I have a persistent Steam Cloud Error for Hollow Knight: Silksong after reinstalling it. I am unable to download the cloud save no matter what I do. When I click on the "Retry Sync" button in the "Unable to sync" dialog, it says "Downloading... (0%)" for ~10 seconds, then goes back to saying "Unable to sync".

Here's what I've tried so far, including doing most of these all together, with no change in the result.

  • started a new save
  • toggled Steam Cloud in the game's properties off, then on again after restarting Steam
  • switched from the native Linux version to using Proton (experimental), and back after that didn't help
  • disabled my firewall
  • restarted Steam
  • restarted my PC
  • changed my download region
  • uninstalled the game
  • deleted all local files related to the game, both in the .steam dir and the .config/unity3d dir
  • reinstalled the game

At this point, I don't care that much about getting my save data back. I just want to be able to have a save backed up to the cloud at all. If that means nuking my cloud save, I don't really care that much.

Upon inspecting the logs, it seems like a bunch of the requests to the Steam Cloud server are timing out, but most are succeeding. As far as I can tell, this server doesn't change when changing download region.

cloud_log.txt (gist)

Steps for reproducing this issue:

I have no idea how one might reproduce this, since it's only happening for one game.

Ggomander 2025-12-04 github

I was eventually able to resolved this by deleting and recreating my local save again, toggling Steam Cloud while the game was running, and restarting Steam a few more times on top of that. I was eventually able to trigger the save data conflict dialog and overwrite the cloud save with my local one, thus losing all my cloud saves. After another 2 Steam restarts, the cloud save system seems to work again, as far as I can tell.

Nothing extracted yet.