The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Save Files Are Vanishing

For many gamers, an Elder Scrolls game without a few bugs is a game missing much of its charm. So, many Oblivion fans were happy to see that the remaster retains much of the erratic behavior of the original. However, there’s a difference between a hilarious visual bug and one that completely destroys the player experience. And according to recent player reports, some gamers have found a pretty massive problem with Oblivion: Remastered. For players on Xbox and PC, the game’s save files have a tendency to just… vanish. As of now, the issue doesn’t appear to be impacting PS5 players as heavily, but it does look to be a pretty widespread concern.

For many gamers, save files have been self-deleting and vanishing into Oblivion since the game launched, causing players to lose hours of progress. Although fans didn’t want to see all the charming little quirks and bugs ironed out, losing save files isn’t among the problems that Elder Scrolls fans want to see in Oblivion: Remastered. However, it’s been two days since the issue began, and no fix has yet been confirmed by Bethesda and Virtuous. As of today, the developers have not made any public statements acknowledging the problem or when a fix could be deployed. However, given the number of support tickets submitted, it is relatively likely that they are aware and hopefully working towards a fix.

Although no official statement about a fix has been released just yet, Bethesda Support does have a response specifically to help work around the “Disk Full – Save Failed” error some players are having. The solution for that specific issue can be found here, and will mainly see players either making more space on their disk or double-checking their antivirus software, which could block the saves. However, this isn’t quite the same as the disappearing save file issue that many players have reported, which seems to stem from another problem.

Possible Fixes for Save Files Disappearing in Oblivion: Remastered

Players on the Steam support thread for Oblivion: Remastered have shared that their save files seem to be vanishing entirely from their PCs. Gamers are logging in to continue their journey in Cyrodiil, only to see no record of their previous saves. The issue appears to be related to the game attempting to sync files via OneDrive, a notoriously irritating issue with PC gaming on Windows devices. As noted in the Steam support thread, one player found a potential solution for the issue on PC by manually copying and pasting the save files from OneDrive to the Oblivion: Remastered save folder. This temporary solution appears to be working for many players experiencing save issues via PC, so it’s worth a try if you log in to find save files missing.

Another player on PC suggests instead creating a separate desktop icon for Oblivion: Remastered, then selecting “run as administrator” when launching the game. One or two players report that this seems to have helped for them, so it may be another potential fix.

Oblivion Remastered – Saving issue
byu/alexaustinv inoblivion

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As for Xbox, many players are using Xbox Game Pass to play on PC, thus leading to a similar issue to what players are having with Steam, with files saving to the wrong place. However, it seems that save files are also struggling on Xbox consoles, as some players note that the files are intermittently vanishing there as well. One Reddit user, @Leather_Sugar_8094, shared a potential fix for the Xbox save file issues with Oblivion: Remastered. They suggest that players try to quicksave, even if the UI doesn’t reflect it working, then restart the game. This should, in theory, let you create new save files afterward. Many gamers confirm that this solution is working for them on Xbox.

With those playing on PS5, there seem to be far fewer reports of save file issues with the Sony console. One player in the Xbox thread did note missing save files on PS5, but reports of these issues seem much less widespread than those on Xbox and PC. It’s unclear why this may be, though it’s possible the Game Pass and OneDrive Cloud saves are complicating matters on other platforms.

Hopefully, the fixes above can help you avoid losing your progress in Oblivion: Remastered until a more permanent solution is deployed.