When a Steam game leaves Early Access, the studio’s 1.0 build decides what happens to old saves. Of 9 well-known games that left Early Access between 2022 and 2026, 5 of 9 loaded old saves, 1 carried over bases and items but reset the story, 1 needed a new save for the 1.0 content and 2 broke compatibility outright. 4 of the 9 posted a save problem or fix within 14 days of release.
This article is about graduation, the move from Early Access to 1.0. If you are preparing to enter Early Access, the Early Access launch checklist covers that launch and its first 48 hours.
What happens to saves when a Steam game leaves Early Access?
Nothing, on Steam’s side. Steamworks describes leaving Early Access as three steps: upload and publish the 1.0 build, press Release in the release options, and post an announcement. The Release button updates the release date, removes the Early Access branding and applies any launch discount. It does not convert or delete anything.
So the save question is a build question. If the 1.0 build changes the save format, the world layout, quest flags or the save folder, players find out the moment Steam updates the game. Valve’s only written rule on this is aimed at Early Access updates in general: if you know updates will break save files, tell players up front.
Two Steam features can still touch saves. Steam Cloud syncs whatever files your Auto-Cloud rules match, so old files can come back after a player deletes them locally. Larian warned about exactly that before Baldur’s Gate 3 left Early Access. And beta branches let you keep an old build alive for players who want to finish a run. A 1.0 build is the biggest update most Early Access games ever ship, so treat it like one: the free patch day QA checklist lists 34 checks, and its save and regression sections carry straight over to a release candidate.
Which games wiped saves at 1.0 and which migrated them?
We read the 1.0 announcements and the next two weeks of patch notes for 9 games that are well known for leaving Early Access on Steam. They are public cases picked because they are well known, so they do not stand for all graduations.
Save trouble did not end on launch day either. Four of the nine posted a save problem or fix in the first two weeks. Two of those four, Palworld and Enshrouded, had kept old saves compatible. A 1.0 build changes enough code that saves need a regression pass of their own, beyond one load test. If your team cannot spare the hours, a Launch Health Check can take the migration pass off your plate. Up to 2 testers can spend its roughly 30 hours on old saves and the 1.0 release candidate, with 5 Team Lead hours on top and a report within 3 business days.
| Game | 1.0 on Steam | Old saves at 1.0 | What the studio said | Save issue within 14 days |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grounded | 27 Sep 2022 | Partial migration | Bases, recipes and inventory carry over; story quests reset, players moved to the start, upgrade points refunded (Steam) | None posted |
| Baldur’s Gate 3 | 3 Aug 2023 | Not compatible | Early Access saves and profiles not compatible; delete them, since Steam Cloud or Larian Cloud may re-download them (Steam) | Hotfix 4 pulled on day 13; saves made on it would not load until re-release (Steam) |
| Sons Of The Forest | 22 Feb 2024 | Compatible | Old saves still work; fresh save recommended for the story (Steam) | None posted |
| V Rising | 8 May 2024 | New save for 1.0 content | Official servers reset; old patch kept on a Steam branch for server owners (Steam) | None posted |
| Satisfactory | 10 Sep 2024 | Compatible | Even 2019 saves supported, but story beats and milestones may need redoing; new game recommended (Steam) | None posted |
| Hades II | 25 Sep 2025 | Compatible | Some of the 50 new achievements unlock retroactively when you load saved progress (Steam) | None posted |
| Xenonauts 2 | 2 Apr 2026 | Not compatible | 1.0 breaks Milestone 6 saves; Legacy branch to finish old campaigns (Steam) | Day 1: saves “lost” after a save-folder move; day 9: hotfix broke some tactical saves (Steam, Steam) |
| Palworld | 9 Jul 2026 | Compatible | Old saves may spawn outside the new map edge; old mods can corrupt saves (Steam, Steam) | v1.0.1 fixed save data being discarded (Steam) |
| Enshrouded | 15 Oct 2026 | Compatible, converted | Saves converted to a new format; starting over strongly encouraged (Steam) | Day 1: crash during save migration on corrupted characters (Steam) |
The pattern is clearer than the verdicts. Studios that kept saves compatible often still told players to start over, three of the five here. That is a soft wipe: old saves load, but the 1.0 story, world edits or balance only make sense from the start. The two hard breaks both came with a way out. Xenonauts 2 kept the old build on a Legacy branch, and Larian told players how to clear old saves without Steam Cloud bringing them back.
What breaks around saves at 1.0, besides the save format?
The cases above show six failure types. Only one of them is the save format itself.
| What changed | Case | What players saw |
|---|---|---|
| Save folder | Xenonauts 2 redirected saves away from OneDrive and Dropbox folders | Saves looked deleted; they were in a new location (Steam) |
| World layout | Palworld moved the playable boundary | Old saves could spawn outside the map; “Emergency Escape” needed |
| Corrupted old data | Enshrouded’s migration met corrupted character saves | Crash on load, then characters missing from the list until a fix |
| Mods | Palworld warned that disabled mods still load from the folder | Corrupted saves, blocked quests |
| Story and progression flags | Grounded reset quests; Satisfactory milestones and messages moved | Old saves load but story beats do not trigger |
| Servers | V Rising reset official servers | Progress on official servers gone by design |
None of these shows up when a developer loads their own latest save on their own machine. They show up on saves from older versions, made by players with cloud folders, mods and odd progress orders.
What else breaks when a game graduates?
The launch itself. Steamworks says wishlisters get an automatic email when a game moves to Released. Planet Centauri left Early Access in December 2024 with 138,675 wishlists and sold 581 copies in five days, according to its developer. In September 2025 Valve told the studio that a bug had stopped wishlist launch emails for “less than 100” releases since 2015, theirs included, and offered a Daily Deal (GamesRadar, 19 September 2025). It is a rare failure, and a studio can still watch for it. Compare day-one sales with your wishlist conversion in earlier sales events, and contact Valve fast if the gap is extreme.
Two more points from 2026. Since February, Early Access pages can show a planned 1.0 date, which also appears in the Steam calendar (GamingOnLinux, 9 February 2026). A public date is a promise, so the migration pass needs to fit inside it. And Bugnet’s developer blog calls graduation “usually your single biggest visibility event” (Bugnet, 2 June 2026), which raises the cost of a save bug in week one.
For context on bugs in Early Access, our September 2026 index found that the 83 Early Access launches had a median of 11.1% of early reviews mentioning bugs, against 5.9% for 509 full releases (Steam launches in numbers). Those are Early Access starts, not graduations, so they say nothing direct about 1.0.
Save migration test list for an Early Access to 1.0 build
Copy this into your 1.0 plan. Each line is a test someone runs on the release candidate, through Steam, before you press Release.
- List every save version still in players’ hands: each Early Access milestone that changed the format.
- Keep a library of real saves from each version, including late-game, mid-quest and modded ones.
- Load each one on the 1.0 build and play 15 to 30 minutes past the load point.
- Check story and quest flags on old saves: does the next beat trigger, can the ending be reached?
- Check world changes: spawn points, moved boundaries, removed areas, buildings on changed terrain.
- Check inventory and recipes for items that were removed, renamed or rebalanced.
- Load a deliberately damaged save and confirm the game reports it instead of crashing.
- Test the save path move, if any, including OneDrive, Dropbox and non-English user folders.
- Test Steam Cloud on two PCs: an old save on PC A, the 1.0 build on PC B, then back.
- Delete local saves and confirm cloud does not restore files that break the 1.0 build.
- Install 1.0 over an Early Access install with old mods in the folder.
- If you keep a legacy branch, switch to it and back and confirm both builds find their saves.
- Check achievements on old saves: retroactive or not, and say which in the patch notes.
- Test multiplayer and dedicated servers with worlds from older versions, if you have them.
- Write the save policy into the 1.0 announcement: compatible, converted, partial or not, and how to keep playing old runs.
If you want to size this pass in hours, the QA hours calculator has a 1.0 option that estimates testing time from content length and genre. What “regression” means in practice is in the regression pass glossary entry.
Should you wipe, migrate or keep a legacy branch?
Each option in the cases trades one cost for another, and you can state the trade in the announcement.
| Option | When it fits | Cost | Cases |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keep saves compatible | Format and world mostly unchanged | Full regression on old saves; story may not trigger | Sons Of The Forest, Satisfactory, Hades II |
| Convert on load | Format changed, content still maps | Migration code plus tests on corrupted and odd saves | Enshrouded |
| Partial carry-over | Story or world reset, progress kept | Deciding what carries; clear messaging | Grounded |
| Break and keep a legacy branch | Big systemic changes | A branch to maintain and a switching guide | Xenonauts 2 (V Rising kept its old patch on a branch for server owners, while 1.0 content needed a new save) |
| Break and ask for a clean start | Old data could break the new build | Players lose runs; cloud cleanup instructions | Baldur’s Gate 3 |
Whichever row you pick, put it in the first line of the 1.0 announcement. Grounded opened its 1.0 post with “What is going to get wiped?” and answered it in the next sentence. Players will ask anyway.