It is always shame. I love backing up my things on PC, that is what I did for ages before the cloud was introduced. Honestly I like it more offline.

And now the game crashes on startup. According to Steam users, it's save-related. I know it's been ages since I got it, but given that it's broken now, has been problematic since I first played it and the devs are unresponsive in their own tech support thread on Steam, might request a refund even if it's a long shot.

That is why I stopped asking for LAN option. The developers don't care about anything other than praise, or asking trivial questions like "name it auto or car?". Sadly there is no support behind the game despite the strong marketing. Only Tasharen is worse (Windward) where the moment you say anything bad from the game or asking for a fix, there is a chance they ban you from their server. Of course profit is important, after all that's what keeps the game and its servers alive. But making a game work as intended is more important in my opinion.

About the save, there should be a backup folder. It should back up an older save just in case but instead just copy the current save when you exit the game. Interestingly enough replacing the save with that backup save always helped me when the game failed to load my profile.