Valve’s gearing up for the official launch of its Steam Deck handheld, and it’s added a new feature to Steam that’s going to make it easier to move back and forth between the Steam Deck and your PC. Dynamic cloud sync will upload any save data to Steam’s cloud when you suspend a game on the Steam Deck, which means you won’t have to fully exit a game before you can pick back up on your PC.
“We anticipate that users will frequently suspend their Steam Deck without exiting the game, as is common with other hand-held gaming devices,” Valve explains in a new post about dynamic cloud sync. When this feature is enabled, “Steam will automatically upload all modified save game data to the cloud prior to the device entering sleep mode.”
When you want to move back to the Steam Deck, Steam will then automatically download any new save data when you wake the device back up. If you don’t enable dynamic cloud sync, you’ll be prompted to shut down the software on the Steam Deck if you try to open the game on another device.
Valve says dynamic cloud sync will be free to use, but it won’t be automatically implemented. Developers will need to integrate the new dynamic cloud save APIs, then ship an updated build of their game and turn the feature on in Steamworks. More information on the feature is available on Steam.