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How to get (multiple) Cyberpunk 2077 save files from Stadia to PS5

I played Cyberpunk 2077 on Stadia. I actually pre-ordered the PS4 version, which also comes with a poster-sized map of Night City. But because of the notorious bugs at launch, I ended up returning that and bought it on Stadia instead. I spend hundreds of hours, 2 playthroughs (one female nomad and one male street kid), and tens of save files, on it.

Now Stadia is gone, and Cyberpunk 2077 is going to release the Phantom Liberty DLC later this year, so I need to play it on a different platform when it comes out. The obvious answer to that platform is PS5, but the question is, how do I get my save files to PS5?

If you search online, especially on r/Stadia, the answer is usually “get the save files on PC and use cloud sync to get them to PlayStation”, but the reality, especially when you need to get more than one save files to PS5, is more complicated than that.

Step 0: Get the save files from Stadia

This step is easy and straightforward. You just head to Google Takeout and select Stadia. Except that Stadia is already removed from Google Takeout as of now, so you need to have already done that before when you had the chance. If you haven’t done this step yet, you are probably out of luck.

If you had already done this step, the save files will be under the Stadia/GAMING/GAME_SAVE/ directory of your takeout archive, and you’ll see the files named like Cyberpunk 2077_1001_gamesave.zip and Cyberpunk 2077_1001_metadata.json. You actually only need the zip files for this purpose.

Step 1: Get the game on PS5, set up your cloud account

It was on sale for half price recently so I took the chance and bought it on PSN (without Phantom Liberty, the discount of the bundle of base game+DLC is less than the half price of the base game + full price Phantom Liberty). After entering the game you’ll have the chance to link your GOG account to enable the cloud features (press R1 on the main menu in case you didn’t find it).

(Since I played it briefly on PS4 the game and the system actually offered me to import my save files from PS4 and I did that, but those are not really useful as they are only the beginning of the game, and also those are all Autosaves which I actually cannot delete from the PS5 version after imported, which are annoying.)

Step 2: Get the game on PC

So I obviously don’t want to pay this on both PS5 and PC, even with the half price discount on PS5. The other problem I have is that I actually do not have any PC in the household. The closest thing to a PC we have is a Steam Deck.

So my original plan for this step is as follows: Buy it on Steam, import the save files onto Steam Deck (via the linux desktop mode), get them to cloud, then refund the game on Steam (Steam provides a generous refund window).

But I was having lunch with a friend today and I casually asked him whether he played Cyberpunk 2077 on PC and he actually has, so I adjusted my plan to borrow his PC and his copy of Cyberpunk 2077 instead (he bought it on Steam).

So we arrived at his home after lunch, he found the directory of the saving data on his PC, made a copy, and I started to try to import my save files to his PC.

Here’s the first problem, obviously the save files on PC are not zip files.

Looks like I need to unzip the zip files into directories, and also change the directories to some formats the PC version of the game would expect. Good thing we have WSL now so I can write a shell script instead of a windows batch script (this script is for illustration purpose only, the actual working script is on my friend’s PC so I can’t guarantee this script actually works, but at least I verified that the regular expression I used in sed works):

#!/bin/sh

for f in *.zip
do
  d=$(echo "$f" | sed "s/Cyberpunk 2077_\([0-9]*\)_gamesave.zip/ManualSave-\1/")
  unzip "$f" -d "$d"
done

Then booting the game I can see my save files, the new problem is, it seems to be unable to link to my GOG account.

Some googling suggested that I need to install GOG GALAXY, link my GOG and Steam account. I installed GOG GALAXY on his PC (with his permission), logged in to my GOG account, but linking to his Steam account always fails with some unspecific error.

Some more googling suggested that I can also use the RED launcher to launch Cyberpunk 2077. I do see there’s a file named REDprelauncher.exe or something like that in the Steam game directory, turns out that he did some manual setting to disable the launcher from Steam to launch the game directly. Running that exe did show the launcher with my GOG account already logged in (probably because I installed GOG GALAXY with my account), and then in the game it shows that my GOG account is correctly linked.

I thought that would just sync all my local save files to the cloud, so I thanked my friend and went back home. I opened the game on PS5, but don’t see any cloud saves available in the game.

More googling time. It turns out that the cloud saving for this game only supports one manual save. You have to load the save, then save it in the game, and then it will be synced to the cloud. If you save again (either on PC or PS5), the new save will overwrite the previous save on the cloud.

Which obviously doesn’t work when I need at least 2 save files, one for each of my playthroughs.

Step 3: PC to PS5 dances

Did I mention my friend’s gaming PC is actually a laptop? So I asked him to bring his laptop to my home, and had dinner with him again.

Basically, at my home, we are repeating this dance:

  1. Find the local save file I want to transfer to PS5
  2. Load the save on PC
  3. Manual save
  4. Now on PS5 that is the cloud save, load the cloud save
  5. Manual save so it’s both the cloud save and locally on the PS5
  6. Repeat with the next save file I want to transfer and go back to 1

This is obviously too tedious for all my tens of save files, not to mention that some of the finish game saves do not actually allow you to save again after loaded (we actually had problems loading some of those saves). So in the end I only picked a few save files I want to keep, one for each playthrough before meeting Hanako in the mission Nocturne Op55N1, and a few other save files before other key moments.

So I guess I’m finally ready for Phantom Liberty now.

UPDATE: I later figured out that not all zip files from Stadia are necessarily manual saves, and the actual save directory name is inside the metadata.9.json file in each zip file, so I updated the script to handle it better (but it requires jq now):

#!/bin/sh

set -e

for f in *.zip
do
  if [ "${f}" = "Cyberpunk 2077_1_gamesave.zip" ]; then
    # These are the user setting files
    unzip "$f"
    continue
  fi
  if [ "${f}" = "Cyberpunk 2077_1000_gamesave.zip" ]; then
    # These are the screenshot caches seem to be Stadia specific
    echo "skipping ${f}..."
    continue
  fi

  tmp=$(mktemp -d)
  echo "$tmp"
  unzip "$f" -d "$tmp"
  d=$(jq -r ".Data.metadata.name" "$tmp/metadata.9.json")
  mv "$tmp" "$d"
done
#English #game #stadia #cyberpunk2077