Ludusavi: game save backups that span every store

Nineteen thousand games, one community manifest

Ludusavi backs up PC video game save data, and its knowledge of where saves live is not hardcoded folklore but a separate artifact, the Ludusavi Manifest, which describes what to back up for each of more than 19,000 games plus your own custom entries. The manifest's data is primarily sourced from PCGamingWiki, and the README closes the loop by asking users to contribute new or fixed data back to the wiki itself, so improvements flow through the shared upstream rather than accumulating in private configs. Coverage extends across Steam, GOG, Epic, Heroic, Lutris and other libraries, and the kinds of saves handled go beyond plain files, Windows registry saves, Proton saves under Steam and Steam screenshots are all supported, which is the difference between a script that copies Documents folders and a tool that actually knows where games hide things.

A GUI, a CLI and completions for five shells

Both interfaces are first-class, a graphical application for interactive use and a command line interface for scripting, with tab completion available for Bash, Fish, Zsh, PowerShell and Elvish, a set that covers every terminal lineage anyone actually uses. The Cargo configuration reveals the implementation choices behind the speed the project claims, the iced GUI toolkit with Wayland, X11 and wgpu backends for the interface, and rayon for data parallelism during scans, plus regashii for Windows registry access and reqwest for fetching manifest updates. The binary requires the app feature, but the crate exposes a library surface documented through an examples/api.rs, meaning other Rust programs can embed the backup engine rather than shelling out. Works on the Steam Deck is listed as a plain feature, not an asterisk.

The comparison the README is willing to run

Few projects publish head-to-head measurements of their competitors, and Ludusavi's comparison section does it with specifics. Against GameSave Manager, as of its 3.1.512.0, the README reports that on the same hardware with default settings an initial whole-system scan took 2 minutes in GSM versus 10 seconds in Ludusavi, a backup immediately after took 4 minutes 16 seconds versus 4.5 seconds, and Ludusavi found 297 games with 2.95 GiB against GSM's 257 games and 2.84 GB, while GSM's select-all toggling took around 42 seconds with 257 entries, is closed source, Windows-only, and has a minimal CLI, though it can create symlinks where Ludusavi does not. Game Backup Monitor covers only 577 games but can import the Ludusavi manifest and back up automatically after play, which Ludusavi achieves only alongside a launcher like Playnite. Gaming Backup Multitool for Linux is Linux-and-Steam only with a database frozen in 2018. These are the author's own tests, but they are checkable claims rather than adjectives.

A portable executable and the SmartScreen ritual

Installation is the friendly kind, download the executable for Windows, Linux or Mac from the releases page and put it anywhere, since the program is portable, or install through Winget, Scoop, Flatpak or Cargo per the installation guide. The README then documents the two gatekeeper rituals honestly, Windows users will see a Windows protected your PC popup because the publisher is unrecognized, resolved through more info and run anyway, and Mac users will hit the unidentified developer warning, with Apple's own support article referenced for the override. Stating the workaround inline matters for a tool whose audience is exactly the people who install software outside store channels, and the portable design means removing it later is deleting one file. On the Steam Deck, the Flatpak route fits the device's software model.

Documentation shaped like its features

The help documentation is organized as one file per concern, and the file names read as a feature list with the marketing stripped out, backup automation, backup exclusions, backup retention, backup validation, cloud backup, custom games, duplicates, filter, game launch wrapping, redirects, roots and selective scanning, plus transfer between operating systems for people moving saves across platforms. A second group covers the interfaces themselves, the application folder, backup structure, command line, configuration file, environment variables and logging, and a third closes with troubleshooting and the question that always arrives, what if my saves are not found. Game launch wrapping deserves the highlight, it is the mechanism that ties backups to actually playing, wrapping a game launch so the save is captured when you quit, which is what turns a backup tool from a chore into a habit.

The community layer: manifests, Decky and VS Code

Around the core sits an explicitly unofficial ecosystem the README catalogs without endorsing, and its shape shows what users wanted next. Secondary manifests extend coverage, including an EmuDeck-specific manifest for retro gaming handhelds and one project that demonstrates generating a manifest on a schedule with a GitHub workflow, an automation pattern others can copy. Plugins carry Ludusavi into other applications, a Decky Loader plugin puts it on the Steam Deck's own interface, a LaunchBox plugin integrates with that launcher, and a VS Code marketplace extension exists for reasons the mind can enjoy without fully explaining. A converter tool imports GameSave Manager data into Ludusavi, the migration path that competitive comparisons only imply. Translation runs through a Crowdin project, with the lang directory carrying the results.

Edition 2024 and an unhurried cadence

The codebase is modern Rust, edition 2024 in the Cargo manifest, with clippy and rustfmt configurations and a pre-commit hook committed alongside, and development is steady rather than frantic, v0.29.1 in April 2025, v0.30.0 in November 2025 and v0.31.0 in April 2026, with the last push on 2026-09-11 and a CHANGELOG recording the sequence. The Playnite extension lives in its own repository, keeping the core tool separate from its integrations, and the assets and examples directories round out a tidy tree. The 0.x versioning is honest about the possibility of change, but a tool that backs up irreplaceable save files, documents retention and validation, and ships a comparison table with real numbers has already answered the trust question most users arrive with.

Editorial conclusion

Use Ludusavi when your game library spans stores and operating systems and you want one open source tool with a real per-game database, a scripting CLI and Steam Deck support. Keep GameSave Manager only if you depend on its symlink feature, which Ludusavi deliberately lacks. Verify first that your games appear in the manifest or add custom entries, enable game launch wrapping or the Playnite extension if you want post-play automatic backups, and read the transfer-between-operating-systems guide before moving saves across platforms.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official README
2. Project repository
3. Release notes