True, but symlinks are a workaround and still clutter the original location.
There should be programs\patches to edit the damn hardcoded path.
(unless it's simply inside a editable config txt in the game folder or a registry key, but I'm not sure I've seen many games using them for it)

That'd work for games that will receive no future patches or additional content and also don't check their integrity, but would mess with any future changes or checks...

Yes. But I don't rely much on them, as not all games use cloud saves and it's difficult to track which ones do or don't.

I've always disliked software that does not contain all of it's files in a single folder.

It's also the exact same trick that Linux Live CDs use.

By the way, if anyone has any idea where the saves of the GOG version of Carmageddon: Max Damage are located, would solve a mystery I've had for years. And no, PCGamingWiki lies, or at least the GOG version creates the folder but then it remains empty.

I already forgot when was the time when I considered the Documents folder mine: It got infested of crap that I decided to have own personal info elsewhere

Thanks for the DC heads up! I just blacklisted it

The reason for this is that Windows 95 introduced the idea of a user profile, where users could have separate configuration settings within the same OS install (with Windows 3.x, there was only one user). At this point, applications (and games) needed to have user/profile-specific settings to properly support this.

This feature becomes more significant in business settings, where the idea of a "roaming profile" (log in at any Windows PC and your settings are then imported from a central server) has become increasingly important. So Microsoft created special folders with related environment variables (%APPDATA% "Application Data" for data that is persistent across multiple logins, %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data for data that is single-session only - like a browser cache) for each user on a system to handle this.

However games developers and publishers collectively really seem to have dropped the ball on this. Rather than having "<game name>" in the relevant folder, they may use "<developer name>", "<publisher name>", "<publisher name>\<developer name>\<game name>" or any combination thereof, and this could go in either of the above folders or under "My Documents" (a special shout out to Harebrained Schemes whose Shadowrun Returns has "AppData" hardcoded as a save location, even for versions of Windows where it doesn't exist).

Microsoft, with Windows Vista, changed the names of the folders used but kept links with the old names for compatibility (thereby confusing matters further) and added an extra layer of complexity with UAC. Steam, as noted above, has added its own extra level of complexity as can Wine.

There is however a solution. Both Windows and GNU/Linux support the concept of a "link" or "alias" where a folder can point to another one (known properly as a "junction" in NTFS) so you can create your own "Saved Games" folder and have that contain subfolders with individual game names which are aliased to the relevant savegame folder. Finding the savegame folder itself can be non-trivial (use an install monitor utility while saving a game should show which folder is being used). Then you just create a junction for that folder (Link Shell Extension makes this a fairly simple process in Windows) within your Saved Games folder.

It's a bit of a hassle, but only needs to be done once for each game you install. And having your saved games within one folder makes them easier to backup - or to retain older saves using versioning software like Aphar Backup (although the webpage is Dutch, the software runs in English).

I keep a lot of documents in a subfolder of the Downloads folder. There's so many different save file subfolders in Documents that it doesn't really feel like a place for documents.

Way too many. Here are some examples
Fallout Shelter, Perils of Man, House Party, Skeletal Dance Party, Wings, Kathy Rain_ Director's Cut,Idle Champions, StarVikings, 1954 Alcatraz, Edna and Harvey - The Breakout,Shadow Tactics Blades of the ShogunInscryption,Desperados 3, The Uncertain, LarryReloaded ...

No game ever should use that directory, this is meant for system programs that need some special rights. I never had use for it.

I fear from the point of view of the game developers and client creators you aren't actually supposed to worry about save file location, because why would you? The wonderful client is handling it all for you, you don't have to think about anything! Our game works perfectly as it is with the one-slot autosave we put into it, and that's how the game is meant to be played - what could ever go wrong that would require you to mess with the save files? ;P

It's actually even worse than it sounds, because even games from the same developer which theoretically use the same storage place, in reality behave differently.

Saved games can be in the same "saved games" folder, where ever that might be, but within that folder, some subfolders are named after the game, some are named after the developer, some use the whole game name, some use acronyms, and so on.

There's zero consistency, which makes it hard to even find saved games for all games in the same series, even less all games from all developers and all series.

The worst one is when games save their data in the registry. No one should be doing that!

I've encountered a few games doing that but the one that springs to mind is Train Valley.

The registry is probably one of the biggest mistakes made in the design of Windows, and one that unfortunately can't be fixed without breaking backwards compatibility.

No program should be saving anything there.