Cross-progression of patch 1.6 prevents Epic Games' cloud save from syncing between different PCs.
Note: This only concerns PC users. I experienced this on Epic Games. Need your feedback if that also happens on other PC platforms (Steam and GOG).
I've already been informed that cross-progression only syncs ONE last save. But what happens with some previous saves we made before that last one?
For Epic Games users, once you activated the cross-progression, the manual saves you made WOULD NOT BE UPLOADED to the Epic cloud save. For example, during the cross-save turned on, if you made 5 manual saves on the PC, the 5th (last) save will indeed be synced (handled by CDPR's cross-save) so you can open it on other platforms (and of course, another PC). But the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th saves will stay forever in the PC where you originally played them (could be in Geforce Now server, PC in your office lounge, your friend's PC, etc.), and there is no way to retrieve them REMOTELY to your local PC. Imagine playing on GFN and suddenly you got a group of manual saves held hostage in the GFN server! In fact, before the patch 1.6, all of those 5 saves will also be transferred to your local PC.
Who are affected?
This will bring damage to those who:
1. Bought Cyberpunk 2077 from Epic Games, AND
2. Had a habit of hopping between different PCs and has been continuously keeping their progress synchronized alternately between those PCs (mainly between Geforce Now and home PC), AND
3. Wanted to get access to all of their manual saves.
How I found this (or, how to reproduce this).
Before patch 1.6 came, I've been playing alternately between Geforce Now and my home PC. I've made 115 manual saves, which have always been syncing from GFN to my home PC (and vice versa) perfectly so far.
After patch 1.6 went live (on both GFN and my PC) with the cross-progression turned on by default, I played in GFN for around 5 hours and made 5 manual saves (save 116, 117, 118, 119, 120).
It surprised me the next day I tried to continue on my home PC, that only the save 120 is transferred from that session.
*I have to remind you again that before patch 1.6 went live, all of those 5 saves would have been transferred completely.
I logged again to GFN, all the saves are still there, and tried to make 2 more saves (save 121 and 122). Switched back to my home PC, and now only the save 122 is transferred. There is no save 116-121.
Note: Save 0-115 are still intact on both systems, as they were made before patch 1.6 and aren't touched by this new cross-progression.
How this should be (note to the developers).
The new cross-progression feature should not interfere with the existing traditional cloud save mechanism (which has been handled well so far by Epic, Steam, etc.). PC to PC users should still be able to sync ALL of their saves as usual.