One of the biggest gaming surprises this holiday season was Baldur’s Gate 3’s shadow drop on Xbox Series X|S after its Game of the Year win at The Game Awards in early December. But while tons of players have had a blast with the critically acclaimed RPG since then, some have also been affected by a save bug that’s grown rather infamous in recent weeks.
The bug, which developer Larian Studios says is due to a firmware issue that can prevent the completion of game saves, has caused many fans to lose Baldur’s Gate 3 progress. Some have even lost entire 80-hour playthroughs to the issue despite following advice from both Larian and Microsoft on how to avoid it, leading to growing player frustration.
A solution for the problem is being looked into and developed, but since it’s the holidays, “everyone is working at lower capacity” and a proper fix might not come for some time. However, Larian is now offering a new temporary workaround through its cross-save system that should allow you to recover saves that you lose.
We’re aware that there is a save issue on Xbox that continues to linger throughout the holidays. It occurs when exiting the game after saving. The game thinks the save was successful but due to a firmware issue, the save file is not fully committed to disk yet. Microsoft is…December 31, 2023
First, you’ll need to create an account on Larian’s official website. Then, in Baldur’s Gate 3, enable cross-save in the Gameplay settings in the Options menu, and link your Xbox account with your Larian one when prompted (this can also be done in your account settings on Larian’s website). Once this is done, the game will keep your five most recent saves uploaded to Larian’s servers, provided you don’t close Baldur’s Gate 3 until you see the “Syncing cloud save” message go away. Then, if the bug occurs, you can reactivate cross-saves in the settings and get access to your saves back.
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Notably, the studio says this process will be made “more fluid” soon, and that it will “extend the number of save games that get uploaded in the coming days.” Until then, though, you’ll only be able to keep five saves backed up on the cloud.
To try and prevent the issue from occurring in the first place, we recommend making sure you fully close Baldur’s Gate 3 once you’re done playing it and don’t leave it open in Quick Resume. Also, turning off auto-saves and limiting the number of quick saves you can have to five can help as well, both of which are options you can change in the Gameplay menu.
Additionally, you should make sure your game is fully up-to-date, as Larian put out an update on December 11 that was intended to help squash this bug. Though the problem has continued to happen after this patch, it certainly can’t hurt to download it and reduce the chance that it’ll affect your game.
It’s great to see the developers offer a seemingly concrete workaround for this issue, though it’s frustrating that it still hasn’t been resolved in the weeks following Baldur’s Gate 3’s release on Xbox. Thankfully, both Larian and Microsoft are working hard on a full fix, so hopefully we’ll see one come sooner rather than later.
“We completely understand that losing progress is frustrating, and unacceptable,” wrote Larian in its post about the workaround. “We’re doing everything we can to ensure this problem — which we understand is unique — is resolved as quickly as possible, and we’ll keep you up to date with progress.”
Baldur’s Gate 3 is undoubtedly one of the best PC games of 2023, and also one of the best Xbox games now that it finally came to Microsoft’s console following a delay caused by issues with split screen co-op on Xbox Series S (the feature was removed from the Series S version of the game). It’s an incredible D&D RPG with some of the deepest and richest writing, worldbuilding, roleplaying, and turn-based combat I’ve ever seen, complete with gorgeous visuals and stellar music and audio. It’s on sale for 10% off right now on GOG and Steam, though only for another two days.