the miracle being "respecting microsoft guidelines and environment variables ! so far it's the first game i saw doing that !

Tyranny is SO FAR the most microsoft guideline compliant game i EVER SAW !

It doesnt shit down its settings/config files in "my documents" but in a more proper place (the one called appdata, which is a folder where applications are supposed to put THEIR datas, not in MY DOCUMENTS damnit, apps already have their own folders so why coming to mess with my own docs)

AND it does another thing:

FIRST GAME EVER i saw that ACTUALLY USED the microsoft user profile's "saved games" folder to save my games, because YES, microsoft in win7 and above made,in the user profile, a folder especially designed to store gamesaves ! As much as, on your user profile folder, you have "YOUR" docs, "YOUR" music, "YOUR" videos and apps are supposed to have "THEIR" datas... microsoft provided game devs a place specific for EACH user to store THEIR OWN saved games !

There are some, but still too few, other games that "at least" put their gamesave files and/or configs in "my documents/my games" folder, which is at least a good thing

so, other devs... YES YOU bunch of pigs who litter my document folder of your own "proud brand publisher/game name" new folders in a very unrespectful and messy way... "my documents" are MY documents, thank you, when i go there, i want to be able to find MY things without rumaging through dozens of YOUR folders... You have $appdata$, you have "my documents/my games", you have $userprofile$/saved games to work with, so do yourself a favor: USE THEM !

sorry for the ranting, but while everyone is flinging shit everywhere, you slowly accept it as "the norm", but when at least somone finally put the shit in the toilet as it's supposed to be, you cant do nothing but frown upon all the others who were flinging poo in the bedroom, living room and kitchen so far ! and direct them to the closet's door !

I must be one of those few that actually want all data / saves in the game directory like some old games used to do it. That way you don't have to search for them.

That's a nice thing, but unless it either runs as an administrator or you disable UAC, the games would be unable to save. Then it'd be marked as a bug. Of course pre-Vista computers didn't have UAC or any issue with this. Thanks Vista.

I never install games in a Windows protected folder so that's not an issue.

Same here, but there's lots of people who don't follow that kind of good practice.

The following games are saved in "Saved games" on my system:

Arx Libertatis
Sacred 2
Command and Conquer 4
Pillars of Eternity
Red Alert 3
Red Alert Uprising
Risen
Risen 2
Risen 3
Space Quest 2 VGA
Two Worlds II

But seeing as how my current home system has > 250 games installed, that's not many...;) My Games:

AoW3
Bioshock Infinite
Dungeon Siege 2
Dungeon Siege 2 Broken World
Expeditions Conquistador
Fallout 3
FalloutNV
Homeworld Remastered
Oblivion
Torchlight 2
SM's Civilization Beyond Earth
Skyrim
Skyrim Special Edition
Titan Quest
Titan Quest Immortal Throne
Wasteland 2
Wasteland 2 DC

...a little better...

I have a lot of game-saves in AppData, too...but that's not as handy because developers often put them in either Local, Local Low or Roaming...and I have to hunt all three directories when looking for them...SOmetimes they'll use more than one folder for one game to store saves and other info in 2-3 of those folders! Grrrr....;)

But you are right--I have a ton of them in Documents, of course. Way too many to list... Heh...It really doesn't matter to me where they put them--I just wish they'd be consistent.

Since I have a lot of GOG games I have lots of old games that save in the game's own root directory/save game folder--which is nice. All you have to do to run an older game that saves in it's own directory in "Run in Administrator mode" (Win10x64) is to simply check the box in the game executable's short-cut Properties that says "Run in Admin mode", save it to the shortcut and forget it--from then on the game will always run in admin mode. Nothing to it.

And of course Dosbox games all save in their root directories--either there or inside a folder there--etc.

Anyway, good post! It's true...I remember Gates lecturing game developers in the Win3.1/95 era as to how to properly save games and even game installation files--which they'd install all over the place--and often not even inside the game's own root directory! Ay Carumba! Talk about a mess...!

you put your finger at the right ting:
BEING CONSISTENT

and especially when microsoft bother to give a damn about providing devs enough sdk guidelines and tech ways to BE consistent

long ago, windows didnt do any effort for that, so "MY documents" was "everybody else's documents" and preferably in the most untidy and pigdirty way

from the games you noted down, on only have a handful of them (both categories merged) and yes $appdata$ aint a place for user-related parameters/content, it's for software/application settings and working files
in fact, tyranny, from what i saw, store every character's savegame in saved games but on launch, it copies the current/last used character saves into appdata/local (makes more sense)

but how many games i saw were putting their craps into "my docs/my company-publisher/devstudio/thegame" or "my docs/this game/" all the time ? as you said: way too many

which is annoying when you try to do some decent tech "home cloud" storage system for your savegames between several computers... it's easier to aggregate one network folder in a library or making one ntfs symbolic link than chasing after each and every game... i ain't savefiles shepperd running after scattered flock/cattle jeez :)

You could always create a new shortcut (batch file) that executes SUBST newPath originalSameGamePath before executing the game

Associates a path with a drive letter.

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

didnt know about subst command, thanks, i'll check if it can suit my needs

so far what i used were symbolic links to either a NAS folder, or i keep a same drive letter reserved on each computer and i have a little usb stick that is set to use it... i put symbolic links on it then... as the stick itself is encased in a little woodpiece necklace (rather organic stuff i admit), it also has some important datas of mine along with the gamesave and i always have it with me... so i'm sure to have my savegames ready whenever i go in the house :)

I understand the network part but if you have an indexed harddrive, finding save files is very easy. I use Everything, it's insanely fast. Write the game's title, jump right into the folder, adds it to my third party application for save back ups and I'm done.

I agree though that it would be great if there were consistency. Like C:\[UserName]\GameSaves.