Homeworld Remastered uses the Steam Cloud to back up your save game files and settings. If you have problems with files that you've added (like badges) that have been backed up to the Steam Cloud and they keep coming back after you've deleted these files, then this guide will explain to you how to delete those files from the Steam Cloud so that they won't keep coming back.

The game backs up specific folders to the Steam Cloud. Any files that are put in these folders will be backed up to the Steam Cloud. The game backs up everything in these folders.

When you run the launcher or the game, Steam checks these folders on your PC to make sure that the files in these folders matches what is stored in the Steam Cloud. If files are missing from your local PC folder, Steam will download these files and add them back for you. This can cause files that you've manually deleted to keep coming back each time you run the game if you don't delete them in a way that Steam recognizes as a change that should also be made to the cloud version of the file.

The simplest method to delete files from the cloud is to start the launcher, delete the files you don't want, then exit the launcher. When the launcher exits, Steam will remove files from the cloud that were deleted while the launcher was running.

To do this:

1. Double click on the game in the Steam client to run the launcher for Homeworld Remastered.

2. Using the mouse, right-click on the Homeworld Remastered Collection in the Steam client and select 'Properties'. Click on the "LOCAL FILES" tab, then click on the "BROWSE LOCAL FILES..." button. This will open a Windows Explorer window set to the location of your Homeworld Remastered folder under the Steam folder. In this folder, you should see the following folders:

_CommonRedist
Homeworld1Classic
Homeworld2Classic
HomeworldRM
HWLauncher

The folders that are going to be backed up to Steam Cloud are:

Homeworld1Classic\Data\SavedGames
Homeworld2Classic\Bin\Profiles
HomeworldRM\Bin\Profiles

3. In the Windows Explorer window, browse down into the folder that contains the files you want to remove from the Steam Cloud. For example, to delete badges for Homeworld Remastered, you would browse down into "HomeworldRM", then "Bin", then "Profiles". In this folder you should see the files for badges. Use Windows Explorer to delete whatever files you want to remove from the Steam Cloud.

4. After you've deleted your files, exit from the launcher.

5. You should see "Syncing..." briefly in the Steam client beside the "Homeworld Remastered Collection" indicating that Steam has updated the Steam Cloud files to match what you have locally on your PC.

At this point, you should be able to start the launcher, then launch the game and the badges (or files) that you've removed on your PC should no longer be showing up in the game.

1. You can check to see what files the Steam client thinks should be copied locally to your PC. Start with the directory where you installed Steam (for me, it's "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam"). Browse to that folder in Windows Explorer then browse down into the 'userdata' folder inside the Steam folder.

2. In the 'userdata' folder, you will see one or more folders for Steam user IDs. If you only see one folder, then skip to step 3. If you see more than one folder, you will need to find your Steam 3 ID. Do this by opening the https://steamhost.cn/ page in your web browser. Sign in to your Steam account, and move the mouse over your username in the middle of the menu at the top of the page (your username will be between "COMMUNITY" and "ABOUT"). Click the "PROFILE" link under your username. Once you see your profile page, copy the URL you see in your web browser for that page (it will start with "steamcommunity .com/id/" followed by your Steam name). Then open http://steamidfinder.com/ in your web browser and where you see "https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/id/example" paste in the URL you copied from your Steam profile page and click the green magnifying glass on the right. It should find your Steam ID (STEAM_X:Y:ZZZZZZZZ). Then click the "Looking for Steam 3 ID?" link just below that on the right. The numbers to the right of the last ':' character will be your Steam 3 ID. Your Steam 3 ID will be the number for the folder for your user inside the Steam\userdata folder on your hard disk.

3. Browse down into your steam user id folder under the Steam\userdata folder. Inside this folder, you will see a list of all the Steam AppIds that use cloud save. Browse down into the '244160' folder (which is the AppId for the Homeworld Remastered Collection game).

4. Inside the AppId folder, you will see a 'remotecache.vdf' file and you may also have a folder named 'remote'. Open the remotecache.vdf file in a text editor.

5. The remotecache.vdf file contains entries for each file that is (or was) stored on Steam cloud. You can seach for a specific file name if you want to determine why that file keeps appearing on your PC (after being downloaded from the cloud). For example, if you wanted to check the status of badges being used for Homeworld Remastered, you could search for "HomeworldRM/bin/Profiles/" which would be followed by the filename for the badge. Here's an example of a badge:


For this example, the size of the file is 16402 bytes. If a file entry in the remotecache.vdf file has a non-zero file size then that file exists in the cloud and Steam will try to download that file to your PC when you start the launcher and the game. If the file size is zero, then that means that the file, at one point in time, existed in the cloud, but the file has since been removed and Steam won't download this file.

NOTE: You CAN'T just set the file size to zero in this file to force Steam to remove the file from the cloud. The Steam client will update this remotecache.vdf file each time you run the launcher or the game and it will populate these values with what the Steam server thinks should be in this file. The only way to remove something from the cloud is to delete the file from the folder while the launcher or game is running, then quit the launcher or game to force Steam to sync the cloud folder up to the local folder (and delete things from the cloud that you've just deleted from the folder on your PC).