CD Projekt Red reveals workaround to transfer Cyberpunk 2077 saves from Stadia

While it isn't surprising that Google is shutting Stadia down, the timing of the announcement did catch a lot of people off guard, including plenty of game developers. Employees and developers were not informed of the decision until it was announced to the world and now, many game devs are figuring out ways to allow Stadia players to transfer their progress to other platforms.

Bethesda, Ubisoft, Bungie and IO Interactive are just a few of the developers looking to enable Stadia players to transfer their progress to other platforms. If you played Assassin's Creed, Hitman, The Elder Scrolls Online or Destiny 2 on Stadia, you should be able to transfer to another platform before the service shuts down in January 2023.

CD Projekt Red has also joined the list now, and already has a workaround for Cyberpunk 2077 players looking to keep their save files. Cyberpunk 2077 is an interesting situation, as the game's poor console launch and need for high-end PC hardware meant that Stadia had what was perhaps the best version of the game at launch, exhibiting fewer bugs compared to other platforms.

If you did happen to have Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia, you can download your save files to a PC and load them on the PC version of the game. From there, you can enable cross-platform saves and then you should be able to access those same save files on Xbox or PlayStation too. The full instructions can be found below:

1. Open takeout.google.com.
2. In “Create a new export” section click “Deselect all” and select “Stadia”. Press “Next Step” to continue.
3. Choose your preferred destination and “Export once” frequency. Choose “.zip” file type and “2 GB” size. Press “Create Export”.
4. Download the export from the destination chosen in the previous step.
5. Locate the downloaded archive on your PC. Extract it.
6. Your Cyberpunk 2077 gamesaves will be located in the following path: …/Takeout/Stadia/GAMING/GAME_SAVE/
   Note that there may be save files from other games located there as well.
7. Files of each gamesave are located inside archives. Extract them to separate folders.
8. To use the extracted saves on PC version, simply copy-paste those folders to the following path: %userprofile%\Saved Games\CD Projekt Red\Cyberpunk 2077
   Make sure that files are not nested inside another folder. See an example of one save below:
   
9. If you own a game copy on supported console platform, you can use cross progression on any of the PC platforms and sync it with your GOG account to transfer your progress to a console:

• Start Cyberpunk 2077 on the PC.
• Make sure that you are logged in in the REDlauncher – this will be the account used to store your cross-platform saves.
• Make sure the cross-platform saves are enabled in the in-game Settings.
• Load the latest save file from Stadia (or any other that you want to copy)
• Save the game again.
• This save file should be synced with the cloud and appear on your console (if you're logged in to the same GOG account).

You can likely use this same method to obtain save files for other games too, but we're still awaiting on some developers to fully roll out their Stadia transfer plans.

Google Stadia was first announced in 2019 and was supposed to enable high-quality game streaming to many screens, and offer improved social and creation features, while also linking with YouTube and Google Search to help enable easy access to the service. Unfortunately, the service launched with a very limited list of supported devices and many of the features announced in the original press conference never saw the light of day.

Google also swiftly gave up on its plans for first-party content, shutting down its Stadia Games and Publishing unit shortly after Microsoft acquired Bethesda for $7.5 billion. The level of investment required to create platform-defining content scared off Google executives pretty quickly. Stadia will shut down for good in 2023 and Google will be refunding all purchases, with the exception of Stadia Pro subscriptions.

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KitGuru Says: Did you happen to use Stadia at all? What was the experience like for you? 

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