We’ve all seen it. The small rotating symbol warning players against impatient shutdown actions. “Do not turn off your system when this symbol is displayed,” reads the message often seen when loading a game (or some other version of those words). The subtext is clear. The saving process is delicate, and if you interrupt this invisible ritual, the data that is saved in some folder deep inside your computer will be damaged, destroyed, broken. You will lose all your progress, all your precious swords and achievements.
But is this true? How likely is it? really suffer catastrophic losses of shotgun shells? To find out, I decided to spend a very tedious afternoon turning my gaming system off and on during multiple games. Was that a good idea? I do not know. I’m a gamer, not an idea guy.
This is not strictly a science experiment. It’s simple. In each game, I’ll hit a save point, watch for the corresponding “save now” icon, and hit the “shutdown” button while the icon shows up. Sometimes savepoints will be manual, sometimes they will be location sensitive autosave. In all cases, I time the shutdown as best I can. Sometimes I do the action multiple times, sometimes I just do it multiple times. It’s worth noting that I only use the shutdown button on my computer. Fear stops me from cutting power to the wall during this process. This is the scarier version of the same experiment. As we will see, this can make a big difference.
To help me understand the reasons behind this symbol, I’ll also be talking to the developer of Getting Over It, Bennett Foddy. Which seems appropriate for an experiment that involves restarting something multiple times.
But first, let’s see what happened. Catastrophic data loss? Or a cute foxtrot alpha? Read on to find out!
Hades 2
Mel’s violent journey through Hell is often autosaved. Saves between rooms, saves after collecting boons, after upgrading your altar skills, after collecting goodies after battle, and probably a bunch of other places I haven’t noticed. Statistically, someone out there has had a blackout at the worst time, right? Well, I tried to emulate that and destroy my save file a few times while its “now saving” wizard glyph was showing. Nothing has happened. Every time I booted my computer back up and started the game, I was alive and well. It never even took me a step back.
Result: No data loss.
Still Wakes The Deep
The save icon in this first-person horror is an unobtrusive set of spinning circles in the corner of the screen. I experienced the same self-destructive force, interrupting, interrupting during rescue in many different places on board the oil rig. Nothing went wrong. Perhaps it’s confirmation to learn that the China Room game is more robust than the rusting machines used by the cheap fictitious oil company Cadal.
Result: Absolutely shit.
Terrible delusion
Dread Delusion’s save points are ornate contraptions holding shiny crystals, and the save icon is a dusty old tome, again in the corner of the screen. Of all the games I try to corrupt, I held out a twisted hope that this pretty good retro RPG would fall victim to my sabotage. It was made by a small team, I figured they probably wouldn’t have time to make the save process absolutely crap proof. But not. Even after multiple attempts, there was no crash, no data loss, no crash.
Result: I am very bored of typing my windows password.
Cyberpunk 2077
The save process in Cyberpunk 2077 takes milliseconds. The little rotating “do not turn off” icon appears and disappears too quickly for me to react. To simultaneously power down and save the game, I would need a second person to help with the process. We’ll have to treat it with the bespectacled precision of two military scientists, counting and turning our keys at the same time. It’s theoretically possible for your save data to be blocked in this game by accident, but you literally couldn’t do it if you tried.
Result: I regret starting this pointless experiment.
Alien: Isolation
Aha Here’s one that does the countdown for you. Alien: Isolation’s save slots are a thing of beauty, as they are actual physical slots on the walls of the space station that you insert a small card device into. The required recording symbol (in this case a small cassette) also appears. I inserted the Ripley card, waited for the recording process to begin, acknowledged the “overwriting game” message, and promptly shut down my computer as soon as the cartridge appeared. Did the infamous Sevastopol station crappy machine corrupt my save file? No. Even the idiots at Seegson electronics seem to be able to make a reliable save process.
Result: I’m just glad it’s over, to be honest.
Game saved successfully
Here it is. Absolutely no data retention horror stories. So why are games showing you this warning? Did I just get lucky? Will turning off your computer while saving really hurt, or is it just some secret custom of game developers?
“I think the answer is probably ‘it depends,’ unfortunately,” says Bennett Foddy, creator of Getting Over It. “Yes, if you pull the power cord from your PC or console while it’s saving your save file, the save file won’t complete and you’ll get a corrupted save. But, many caveats…
“Everyone I know writes to a revolving set of slots to deal with a corrupted file. So if one file is corrupted, it just loads the next newest one. But there is no guarantee that the game you are playing does this.
“Some games have small save files – like Getting Over. It barely records any data when it records. In these cases, you are simply statistically unlikely to interrupt the recording process even if you pull the power cord. You’d probably have to shut down your computer 100 times to be lucky enough to corrupt a save file for this game.”
Foddy’s last point here reminds me of Cyberpunk 2077’s save process during my foray into mad science above. In the particular case, the save file might be big or small, I don’t know. But as hard as CD Projekt RED is, the shooter seems to record incredibly fast, making it unlikely to be interrupted.
But Foddy also thinks that my method of pressing the shutdown button is unlikely to cause any damage at all, as it initiates a shutdown process that “should include completing all current file writes and safely shutting down devices.” Aha So we REALLY need to redo this under more severe “blackout to the wall” conditions.
There is another possible reason why this warning appears in so many games you play. In some cases, this may simply be imposed on developers as part of the publishing process. Back in 2012, Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid and The Witness, complained about this very requirement in the certification process. In other words, including this warning is one of the rules game creators must follow to make sure their games can be sold on storefronts like the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation Store, and Steam.
“Every game MUST say on launch, ‘sometimes this game saves, when you see that animated icon in the corner, DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR CONSOLE, etc.,'” Blow wrote in an email to Ars Technica. “It’s something that the developers have to implement and that has to be tested, which costs a lot of time and money, but worst of all, it affects the user experience because it becomes a bit more bureaucratic to launch the game.” “
Blow goes on to complain a lot about this certification process, basically making the same point as Foddy – that there is a technically sound way to create protection against data corruption. Which would make the warning almost unnecessary.
“[It] may also be a requirement for a historical console,” Foddy says. “I haven’t checked recently (and I suspect the license would prevent me from telling you if I did). It may also be developers who follow the convention. I bet that’s part of it.”
Conclusion
After all, we may be none the wiser about this particular spinning symbol of insecurity. The certification requirements alone make it likely that we’ll continue to see it used in our games for the foreseeable future. But, yeah, it seems mostly pointless. You’re probably more likely to lose your recording file to an overzealous roommate or younger sibling than to a sudden power outage. At least judging by mine scientifically rigorous experiments though.
Yet science is an open book. Affiliate rating of me, the reader! What about you? Have you ever had a save game corruption crash? Lost 55 hours of Persona 5 to the cyber void? What is the most devastating rescue loss of your life? Unload your personal history with me, if we can’t always reliably save the game, let’s at least save each other.
