Why do my players lose progress with cloud saves?

Because of cloud save conflicts resolved wrong. When a player has diverging saves across devices (or from offline play), the sync system must pick which wins, and if it overwrites the newer/more-progressed save with the older one, the player loses progress. It happens from sync timing (uploading a stale save over a newer one) and offline edits conflicting on reconnect.

How should I resolve cloud save conflicts?

Prefer the newer or more-progressed save: track recency reliably (a trustworthy timestamp, play-time, progress metric, or sequence number) so you can compare, and keep the save representing more recent/advanced progress rather than blindly picking by sync order. Never silently overwrite newer progress with older. For genuinely ambiguous conflicts, ask the player to choose rather than guessing wrong.

How do I avoid losing progress in cloud saves?

Never silently overwrite a newer save with an older one, the cardinal rule. Track which save is newer/better and prefer it, ask the player when it's genuinely ambiguous, and keep the non-chosen save around (don't immediately delete it) so a wrong resolution is recoverable. Test multi-device and offline-then-online scenarios to confirm the better save is always kept.

Why Do My Cloud Saves Conflict?

Quick answer: Your cloud saves conflict because a player has saves on multiple devices (or made offline edits) that diverge, and the sync system can't automatically tell which should win. The danger is bad resolution overwriting newer progress with older, losing the player's work. It happens from sync timing (uploading a stale save over a newer one) and offline play conflicting with cloud state on reconnect.

Cloud saves are great until they conflict, the player plays on one device, then another, or offline, and now there are two diverging saves and the system has to decide which to keep. Done wrong, it silently overwrites the player's newer progress with an older save, which is lost progress and infuriating.

Why Cloud Conflicts Happen

Cloud saves sync the save across devices, but divergence is possible: the player plays on device A (advancing the save), then on device B before B synced A's progress (or while offline), so now A and B have different, conflicting saves. The cloud system has to reconcile them, and the danger is choosing wrong, overwriting the newer/better save with the older one. Conflicts also arise from sync timing (a device uploading a stale save over a newer cloud save) and offline play (edits made offline conflicting with cloud state on reconnect).

The core problem is that without good information about which save is newer or more advanced, the system can pick the wrong one, and a wrong pick means lost progress. So conflict resolution quality is everything.

How to Diagnose and Fix It

The symptom is players losing progress when playing across devices or after offline play, 'my progress went backward.' Bugnet captures reports with context, so progress-loss reports tied to multi-device or offline play surface and can be recognized as cloud-conflict issues. They silently destroy progress, so they're high-impact even at modest report counts.

Resolve conflicts correctly: track save recency reliably (a trustworthy timestamp, play-time, or sequence number), prefer the newer/more-progressed save, never silently overwrite newer with older, and for genuinely ambiguous conflicts, ask the player rather than guessing. Keep the non-chosen save around so a wrong resolution is recoverable. See our guide on fixing cloud save conflicts for the details.

Cloud conflicts lose progress when sync overwrites newer with older. Track recency, prefer the more-progressed save, never silently discard newer, and ask the player when unsure.