As per title, steam can not sync cloud saves
I’m pretty sure this is related to CachyOS, because vanilla Arch is fine for me. Haven’t tried any other distro yet
Happens with both flatpak and the gaming meta package
Does anyone have this issue as well and if so have you managed to fix it?
Standard CachyOS install? You own the folder where Steam is trying to sync the cloud saves? The folder permissions are correct?
I doubt that as my cloud saves all work fine on Cachy OS with Steam installed from the repo and my Steamlib being on its own partition.
Have you tried clicking the “Cloud Status” icon in Steam, next to the Play button?
Sometimes it fails for various reasons, particularly if you just installed Steam and added a large preexisting library. Clicking the cloud icon causes it to retry for that one game. It will usually succeed then:
PS: You should really use the cachyos-gaming-meta package, not flatpak.
Late to the party but I had the same issue.
I created this report with Claude since I needed help with this issue. The short summary is that if there are enumerated save files steam will mistakenly report a cloud sync issues for the non existent saves’ files since it does not ignore them. You can see the AI flame me at the end of the summary
AI Summary :
Steam Cloud Sync Reports Failure for Empty Save Slots
Summary
Steam incorrectly reports cloud sync failure for save slots that were never used by the game, even though all real saves sync successfully.
System Info
OS: CachyOS (Arch-based)
Steam: AUR package
Filesystem: btrfs
Game tested: Arco (App ID: 2366970) — likely affects all games with enumerated save slots
Steps to Reproduce
Install a game that uses numbered save slots (e.g. 1-auto.sav, 2-auto.sav … 10-auto.sav)
Play the game without filling all save slots
Observe Steam cloud sync notification — it reports failure
Expected Behavior
Steam should only attempt to sync save files that actually exist. Empty/unused slots should be ignored silently.
Actual Behavior
Steam registers all possible save slots in remotecache.vdf with:
“size” “0”
“sha” “0000000000000000000000000000000000000000”
“syncstate” “2”
It then reports a sync error for these nonexistent files, even though all real saves (syncstate “1”) are synced correctly.
Evidence
Real saves (exist locally and on cloud):
“syncstate” “1” ← correctly synced
“size” “61206”
“sha” “ac58e84254dc8f32bb89c1ef4577f9e1a97a9d63”
Empty slots (never created by the game):
“syncstate” “2” ← reported as failed
“size” “0”
“sha” “0000000000000000000000000000000000000000”
The files do not exist in the local Proton prefix either:
~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/2366970/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Application Data/arco/save/alpha_save/
Only the actually-used slots are present on disk.
Impact
Users are misled into thinking cloud sync is broken and may spend significant time debugging a non-issue.
I found that switching the steam download server location and restarting steam fixes the issue for me.