Every Cloud has a Silver Lining

It struck me today how useful cloud gaming really is. No, really. This was because last night, I finally got my computer running again, only to be forced to reformat the hard drive due to the new hardware I'd installed. Now, I was able to save my music and my documents thanks to a handy backup drive, but for the most part, a lot of my game saves were gone.

Not all of them. I did manage to find my Minecraft save (thankfully), but most games bury their save files into such deep pits that it's almost impossible to find them. Some go even further, EA for example splits its saves into multiple parts in multiple places for Command and Conquer 3, and twice I have lost all of my saves for that game. This latest wipe was no different. Goodbye, my nearly completed data readouts. You'll have to be unlocked again some other day.

But there were some saves I didn't lose simply because they either weren't on my computer or were backed up elsewhere: The companies own servers. I've had my beefs with needed to be connected online to play SCII in the past, but I'm feeling a bit more lenient now that I know my campaign progress was all backed up online. All I did was install the game, log in, and in minutes I was back playing the mission I had left off on. Torchlight has the same feature.

Every Cloud has a silver lining, and I just found mine.