Why are so many modern games still getting saving completely wrong?
Saving a game used to be simple. You hit save. The game saved. Done.
Now? It’s a mess. Auto-saves. Checkpoints. Limited save slots. Manual saves that only work at certain locations. Save systems tied to difficulty. Games that warn you not to turn off the console during saving like it’s 1997 and your memory card might explode.
This should not be complicated.
You know what the player wants? Control. If I’ve just finished a mission and I need to go make dinner, I want to save and quit. Not hunt down a glowing bench or a specific room or wait for a cutscene to finish. Not replay the last twenty minutes because the game decided that wasn’t a “save moment.” Just let me press save and leave.
Some developers treat saving like part of the challenge. They think forcing you to redo huge chunks of gameplay somehow makes it more intense. It doesn’t. It just wastes your time. It’s padding disguised as design. Especially in long games. Especially in story-driven games where the only difficulty is “how many unskippable scenes can you sit through a second time.”
Auto-saves are fine when they work. But half the time they don’t. They trigger in the middle of combat. Or after you make a terrible decision. Or just before a crash. You don’t notice until it’s too late. Manual saving exists for a reason. So why are we pretending it’s some kind of luxury feature?
Then you’ve got the ones that let you save anywhere except during key sequences, major choices, or conversations. Because apparently the game needs to protect its own narrative from the person playing it. Nothing like locking the save function during a boss fight to really remind you who’s in charge.
And don’t even start on games that use “ironman mode” as a marketing feature. If you want to play like that, great. But don’t force it. Don’t turn saving into an optional punishment just because you couldn’t be bothered to design proper consequences.
Save systems should respect the player’s time. That’s it. Not everything needs to be immersive. Not everything needs to simulate pressure. Sometimes I just want to stop playing and come back later without having to redo the same scene three times.
You know what the best save system is? The one you don’t notice. The one that lets you play how you want and stop when you need to. The one that gets out of the way.
Saving isn’t part of the game. It’s part of playing. Get it right.
What game made you rage-quit purely because the save system wasted your time?
