I played about 13 hours so far in No Man's Sky, and yesterday I loaded it up to see the option to start a new game, unlike the option to load a save I usually see. I checked the AppData folder where the saves are , nothing. I downloaded the save back up from the cloud, which was an empty folder. I tried the Verify / Repair tool, which did download something and install it in the game, but it was not my save. It is not a mod conflict / issue, I haven't installed any mods for NMS.

I don't know what to do.

I wouldn't mind starting a new game, but I don't want this to happen again in the new game. I get performance drops too, at random after about an hour after playing. Is this indicating a memory leak?

I also get a memory leack. I just restart game every 3 hour or so. as for saved games I can not help you. But you could backup you saves someplace else on you pc as a temp fix

The Cloud? I never save anything to it ever. ALWAYS make a local Save to your drive. This crap of it being `convenient` is more of a risk. Save local.

You`ll have to start again.

I've never had an issue with cloud saves, up until now if the cloud is the issue.

I have started again, and I see an achievement unlocked that I should have received during my first playthrough. I'll keep saves local for this playthrough.

Yeah I got into the habit of backing up my saves rather frequently myself, after a bug broke my save in NEXT I think it was. Ever since, I usually have the Save Editor open just in case a bug happens again. Each time you tab out of the game and into the editor, it asks you if it should reload the save, as it has been changed by the game. If a bug broke my stuff, I select "no", and the old save is still in the editor - which I can write back into my game slot from there, resetting to the last working save. That way, I never lost more than like, 10 minutes of gameplay.

But yeah, other than that I do manual backups of my save folder, as well. I tend to do that with lots of games, actually - not just a NMS thing for me.